Pandemic of Absence 

Love once moved like a pulse,
a steady drum beneath the ribs of the world,
quiet as breath, certain as sunrise.

Now what we breath in tastes metallic,
like coins held too long between clenched teeth,
and every headline spits sparks
into bone-dry forests of fear.

Hate multiplies like a fever unchecked,
a virus whispering through fiber optics,
crawling the blue veins of screens,
breeding in the soft tissue of silence
where empathy used to live.

We scroll past wounds as if they are weather,
normalize thunder made of shouting,
drink down outrage like it’s oxygen,
sharp, addictive, necessary to survive.

Our words have grown teeth.
They bite before they breathe.
They carve names into strangers
like graffiti on fragile glass.

What madness is this,
to starve the heart and call it strength?

Love, once a wildfire that warmed,
has been smothered into embers,
flickering in forgotten corners,
a neglected altar gathering dust
while we worship the spectacle of division.

We have learned to sharpen ourselves
against each other,
blade on blade,
until sparks become infernos,
and the world burns not from heat,
but from absence.

Absence of listening.
Absence of tenderness.
Absence of the simple miracle
of seeing oneself in another face.

And still…

Beneath the ash, something breathes.

Because hate is a cannibal.

It consumes and consumes
until it gnaws on its own marrow,
until its echo collapses onto itself,
a dying star eating its own light.

And when it finally chokes
on its reflection,
what remains will be small,
quiet,
almost invisible,

a hand unclenched.

A breath taken without defense.

A mirror not turned away.

And in that stillness,
love will not return as thunder,
nor as some grand, sweeping salvation—

but as the simplest rebellion of all:

to look inward,
to cradle the fractured self
with unshaking gentleness,
and to say,

Here…

You are worth loving.