It flashed on the television screen
The death toll rising
It was just another stat for me
Just an inanimate number
General Knowledge
Before that day

Before that day
It was just a boring news piece
Repeated all the time
Shouting matches on television
No on cared bout the dead
Just numbers to them
To me

Some days less some days more
A minister said deaths per capita were less
Tell that to the widow
Percentages and line graphs and histograms
And vultures and hyenas for trps
So dry no emotion
Before that day

Anchors and politicians
Calculating and comparing
Different countries and classes
By deaths and cases
Like stock market
Humans in flesh and blood
Like shares and indices

These lives these smiles
What destiny held for them
Who knows
Gone away in the icu
To just become another statistic
Another pawn for politicians to fight about

Thousands and thousands of people
Becoming numbers
Meant to be forgotten in days

The magnitude made me numb
I didn't care
It wasn't me
Wasn't my family
It didn't affect me
To me it was a
Just a never ending vacation

Rates of poverty and unemployment
Didn't matter to me as a child
Misery and anguish of people
Millions and millions of people
Just a figure to be momentarily saddened by

While I cursed at the zoom meeting screen
Someone's mother and father passed away gasping for oxygen
Leaving a newborn orphan
And while I ate the same bland food
Someone died walking miles towards his home

Before that day
It didn't matter
It wasn't me
Wasn't my family
Till it was

It's painful
A person becoming a statistic