Pandemic Beloved

Your insatiable need to be social I also hold dear,

It is the just the ticket I needed to spread far and near.

But, while blame fired sharp from pointed fingers of man I went about my business, infecting human after human.

And as talking heads squawked and doubt clashed with fear

I traveled in bodies unhindered through hemispheres.

Impatience, ignorance, politics, and greed

Are the roads I travel forward with breakneck speed.

Weapons you waged against my voracious onslaught

With vaccines, pills and infusions, together you fought.

Mutable I am, so in that manner I countered back,

Everything you did, I changed, and continued my attack.

But wait…

My goal can’t be to kill you all, my hapless hairless apes, My sweet reproductive apparatus, I need you...like a mate.

If I grow too strong, oh no, I will kill the hand that feeds, And my genes cannot replicate, and I cannot stay freed. So, I’ll weaken, and change until I am but a nasty cough, Just an inconvenient flu, my dears. For me, that’s enough.

Endemic I will become, established in my parasite ways…

My beloved humans, we will be together for countless, countless days.

Sharon Gonzales MD Assistant Dean for Careers in Medicine Rutgers New Jersey Medical School