Tuesday Poem: Mortality

We are contagious.
We will sneeze on you,

spit on you, breathe on you.
Shake hands with you, exchange

fluids with you, be where you will be,
touch what you will touch.

We will give you scabies, warts,
chicken pox, measles, hookworms,

hepatitis, meningitis, mononucleosis,
influenza, ebola, gonorrhea.

We come with pathogens, cankers,
seizures, parasites, germs, fungi,

infections, plagues, microbes,
epidemics & pandemics.

You wear latex gloves against us,
mask your faces from us, antibacterialize us,

quarantine us, burn us.
Yet still we weep, we deposit, we exhale.

We push buttons, hold railings, suck
our thumbs, wipe our eyes, pick our teeth.

We lie down upon, we touch,
We are intimate. We love.

You will contract, come down with,
sicken, show symptoms of, begin to itch,

to seep, to bleed. Be afflicted with,
fall victim to, develop, succumb to.

We are the last gasp, the final touch,
the ticking second.

We are you.

© T.Clear 2011

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More Tuesday poems can be found here.