Plague of Hearts and Minds
By Steven L Herring

Alone
I've always felt it
Crowded rooms
Human-filled hallways
Bars brimming with patrons

Everywhere empty inside
I could look right through
solid mass and see nothing
but emptiness and black

But now that we're altogether separate,
Trapped in our rooms
concealed
Carrying our will to live gracefully
like a burden in our hands
I now relish in the fact
that we're all here together
All of us willingly weeping
Shrouded
Crowded under the same
black
cloud

Ominous in danger
Dangerous together
I see you
slyly smiling from
across the room
and our eyes light up
while our mouths,
masked with paper and cloth
crack a secret smile

And all of a sudden
we're not alone
We suffer together
under the same black cloud