Locked, Down

I wrote this poem about the mental implications of lockdown (inspired from the World War One poem ‘The Soldier’ by Rupert Brooke). We human beings were not designed to be locked up. As introverted as I am, being inside all day everyday takes its toll.

This spring, my mind is lost to me:

that my old smile is so tightly sealed

in a box tucked away. But without the key

these long nights have only revealed;

a young man so familial, but lonely and lost

days aplenty in his head sad and alone

with a mind of daffodils and a flurry of frost

in his devices, night terrors left to roam

Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash

And think, this onion peeled, augmented

tremors in the eternal mind, no less

conditions to groundhog days relented

silent shakes, wide-eyed and depressed

sore smiles, a post-traumatic adolescence

in prisons at home, breathing in quarantine

blinded by autism, four walls, and a screen.