Serving Quarantine

I was locked in a prison cell of

my smart-phone screen

before being remanded onto the death row of the sick.

While serving my time.

I read many books.

Firstly they were on pathology and medicine.

Then on the Indian Penal Code.

Then came lexicons of “necessity”,

and the end-rhyme between “need” and “greed”

then books on economics

to choose between two nightmares

one was death preceded by a sensation of drowning,

the other, a slow death from starvation.

A little ventriloquism surrounded me.