A Quarantined World

By Salma Ahmed

Is it strange that I look forward to Mondays now?
The day where we go to the coin laundry and fill up on gas
The gas station now gives me an odd sense of reality
Smelling the burning incense of patrol
And watching the store clerk take our money with gloves and a mask
I look at the other people waiting in line to pay
I wonder if they’re thinking what I’m thinking
The streets that were once bustling now deserted
It’s funny how we used to feel on top of the world
But forgot that even at the very top
As we look down on the people below us who look like ants
That we look like ants to them too
And all it took was an unseen microscopic particle
To cause everything we know and love
To grind to a steaming halt
And as powerful as we may think we are
We will never pierce the earth
Or reach the mountains in height
Our hands are dry
And we stay contained between our four walls of safety
As time withers from existence
Yesterday, today, and tomorrow are the only sense of time we now have I wonder if the sun and the moon miss us
As they switch from day to night and night to day
Wondering where the little humans have gone