Thread by @ButiManamela

Caskets, tears and wreaths (a thread dedicated to those we lost due to covid)

Caskets, Tears and Wreaths

We are running out of caskets and tears, in these long nights were we sit around the table,
eyes fixed to another,
anxious but certain,

that the angel of death will come knocking,
this hour or the next,
this kin or the next,
as we borrow caskets and wreath from our neighbors
like it’s sugar for our tea,
they bring with sugar their tears of comfort,
and beg for our promise—

when one of their kin departs on account of death,
we shall be by their side;
caskets, tears and wreath
Death has become the sibling we do not want
It’s scent lingers on from dusk to dawn,
to wake to tidings of who died and was it the covid thief

Even worse,
the numbers become faces,
the faces become neighbors,
The neighbors wail and wonder why they’ve been forsaken
As we line up their graves and immortalize their names on tombstones;
we wonder,
who amongst us,

will be in your neighboring barrow when the coroner makes their next call.
so we march back to our hollow homes,
for silent prayers and hope that one of these days, let it be that door, or that one, or the one that houses my enemies;

and yet,
unlike the biblical fable in Exodus,
this virus is blind to the blood marking your door,
and the plaque of death shall visit all of us door by door,
until it’s thirst is quenched,
and it’s throne of skulls is living monument that life begins with you and me,

But death, is such a lonely and final voyage, draped in caskets, tears and wreaths
But like all wounds,
healing begins as soon as the infliction end,
scars will be there,
permanently fixed on the face of humanity to tell stories of the viciousness of death,

and the smiles that grew from the sweetness of victory,
as we stop frequenting the resting place of those she stole,
this genesis we look forward to,
our triumph and journey of a new beginning, and like all its cousins—covid will end its ways as the messenger of death...