Rows and Rows,

Of white metal boxes.

Packed together in makeshift hospitals,

In the outskirts of the city.

They rose from dust;

Metal beams at dawn,

Grow into hospitals by dusk.

Guards marching,

Corpses lying about.

And yet, the woes…

  silenced by fear.

Dust and dirt drift in the wind,

Screeches and sirens

Reverberate in the air,

Along with the ashes of the lost.

Double crucified by Covid and Lockdown,

Patients, or rather, prisoners,

Crammed 

In the crowded, guarded chambers.

Walls, taller than humans.

Watch towers, tracking souls.

All with a hint of barbed wires,

Ready to eliminate all who dare defy.

And those who didn’t?

Still shared the same fate.

Crammed together,

Like rats in a crate…

Deprived of freedom,

Deprived of privacy,

Deprived of love,

Deprived of family.

What else is there left to have

When all human rights have been stripped.

The worst of all was the phone call … 

my grandparents also went to the same place.  

The horrors I heard on WeChat 

In the wretched conditions, 

they were locked down.

Those deemed “unfit” for society,

Even those accused of so, but never proven.

All shared the same fate

For they were human,

No longer.