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She’s Dead

Todd Matson

She’s dead
and all you have
for me are crocodile
tears, thoughts and prayers,
noisy gongs, clanging cymbals,
fingernails on chalkboards.

Can you give her back to me?
I want her back! She didn’t deserve
to die like this! In a hospital overrun by a
glut of defiantly unvaccinated covid patients who
decimated hospital staff whom they left wounded and dead
in a senseless war of attrition, sickened, burned out, depleted and
dwindling to numbers too few to help those under their care.

She did everything right
for herself, for her husband, for
her children, for her grandchildren, for
her friends, for her neighbors. She rolled up
her sleeve. She took the shots. She wore the masks.
She considered everyone else. She didn’t want to spread
the virus. She didn’t want to make others sick. She didn’t want
to cause anyone else’s death.

Even so
she’s dead
because of people
like you who refused
to roll up their sleeve, wear
a mask, take one for the team;
because of people like you who extended
their middle finger to their neighbors.

She’s dead
and all you have
for me are crocodile
tears, thoughts and prayers,
noisy gongs, clanging cymbals,
fingernails on chalkboards.

She’s dead.
And she was my mother.

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