Thank you, Corona,
in a few agonizing months that you invaded our bodies, you’ve opened our eyes
to the colossal stupidity of human hubris and presumption of invincibility,
for a mere invisible half-living organism, smaller than the width of a hair strand,
could so effortlessly slip through the protections of
all our omnipotent Gods,
our top-of-the-food-chain mirage of dominance,
and our thousands of we-can-blow-the-world-many-times-over nuclear triceps.

Thank you, Corona, for showing us
the unsurprising yet joyful capacity for nature to rapidly self-correct
from humanity’s unapologetic and brazen plunder of its resources
while we sit helpless in our homes,
overwhelmed by fear of your invasion,
locked down and unable to venture out.

Thank you, Corona, for showing us
the outrageous bigotry in human nature,
in every crisis across cultures, countries and centuries,
our consistent retreat into the comfortingly warm embrace of xenophobic bile,
and that, at the end of it all,
we still remain the same beasts that civilization tries to convince us we have progressed beyond.

Thank you, Corona, for showing us
the shameless hypocrisy within many of us who blame, for all ills,
migrants and minorities and any group they are not,
and yet will never question the source of blood plasma to be used in their treatment
when you slowly strangle and snuff the oxygen out of their miserable lungs.

Thank you, Corona, for showing us
that the super structures of our economic successes
stand on frail foundations of manual labour by low-income workers,
and though our governance structures and healthcare systems
have an abhorrent skew of in favour of the haves,
the indifference and impotence within our collective consciousness
will accept this condemnation of fellow humans as simply unavoidable collateral damage.

In spite of all this, you’re but a silly, unintelligent virus,
you don’t realize we are humans
with a brain that, in triumphant narcissism we declare, is most complex structure in the universe.
If only you had a fraction of our ability to think, you would clearly see,
that these deaths that you caused will slowly change in our minds
from individual humans with joys, sorrows and habits like us
to mere numbers in a bottomless race
by each government to show how well they are protecting us.
That while we temporarily clap today for sanitation workers, police, doctors, nurses and firemen,
And feed the odd destitute and dispossessed,
eventually we will go back to living our individual self-indulgent lives,
quietly closing our once-opened eyes…

…until the next time you visit us again.