Malice Pandemic

Hate drifts in like rancid smoke,

curling from a fire no one remembers lighting,
a stench that clings to skin,
to breath,
to the fibre of our scrolling thumbs.

Once, it wore uniforms,
marched in columns across blood-soaked fields,
its anthem echoing through trenches,
its teeth gnashing in the roar of cannons.

Now, it slithers through fiber optics,
a serpent in the circuitry,
whispering venom into solitary rooms
where blue light baptizes the innocent.

Undetected traitors of love

hide in spiritual surroundings,
kneel at altars,
sing hymns with a forked tongue,
a masquerade of holiness
while sharpening daggers beneath the robes.

It dances at weddings,
lurks in classrooms,
wraps its fingers around the fragile throats of children
who learn to hate before they learn to spell.

History carved its initials into stone:
Crusades, inquisitions,
lynching trees swaying like grotesque chandeliers,
flags woven with supremacy,
walls built from fear’s bricks.
And still,
we feed it with hashtags,
with headlines,
with the sweet narcotic of outrage
served in bite-sized pixels.

Who determined religion as the nemesis?
Who decided that faith should wear chains,
that love should be gagged,
that the sacred must bleed for the sins of the profane?

Yet…

We dress hate in costumes,
patriotism,
piety,
justice,
and parade it through the streets
while peace wanders naked,
exiled to deserts where even silence tastes of ash.

But if we listen…

Beneath the static,
beneath the drumbeat of division,
there is a hum,
soft as breath against glass:
Peace.

The one enemy hate cannot kill,
the ghost that lingers at the edge of every battlefield,
the aura that floats within reach
if only we unclench our fists
and dare to touch
what hate fears most—
the simple,
unbreakable
act of love.