Love in the Time of Corona*

A Series of Pandemic Haiku

Image by My pictures are CC0. When doing composings: from Pixabay

Prologue (a tanka)

Flu stole my mother
Thief of life in ink of night
Did she try to fight?
Was my heartbeat in her dreams?
No farewell, I’ll never know

I shiver, gasping
grasp at life but there’s no air
Vacuum expanding

Nurses scurrying
Masked strangers reassure me
All I love locked out

Ventilator hums
Who lives who dies who decides
Fair has no meaning

I can’t see, hear you
I smell nothing, yet your scent
salty sweat lingers

Will I remember
Sunsets, slap of the ocean,
Touch of your fingers?

Your heart makes me whole
But you can’t hold me…So cold
No one no one no

*Title adapted from Love in the Time of Cholera, of course — the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez