we'll survive, you said last summer,
back then, the world was still full of people,
of someone's parents and someone's grandparents,
the world was full of unborn children and due dates,
of people never divided into positives and negatives,
it was summer, it was holiday, the first wave here was already over,
and at that time, the world was brighter, the world was more crowded

then the second wave has started, then autumn came and then
all days came with all pandemic hours
all daily figures announced at 1 p.m. sharp
the clocks showing only 1 p.m.
I used to wash my hands three times, every hour, as grandparents used to worship three times, when they walked next to churches

people have walked the same way, lonely, there is enough place to keep social distance in this town,
once, I got on a bus, no one rushed, no one laughed, no one told out loud what their children were doing and what they were cooking for lunch, no one was pushing during breaks, even the police did not shout anymore, stay at home, stay at home, just because

we got used to it

it was late autumn, the second wave had started, in Romania, people died every day, the others were dying,
we lived on, hour after hour
it was a greenish blue world of disposable face masks
the same world where clouds once grew from the earth
the same world in which I had grown the horizon, my love, the birth and the death
and all those poems

between one wave and another, I stop for a moment, looking at the clear May sky and thinking,
maybe you got sick or maybe you got vaccinated, maybe you let your hair grow long again or maybe the hospital where you worked is also devastated by the pandemic

between Happy Diwali and Eid Mubarak,
between Merry Christmas and Happy Easter,
we'll survive

I'm watching the news and crying,
fewer and fewer people die here,
the other day I got the booster shot
then I didn't feel my hand anymore