Written by Venus Aradhya, 15, Washington
Every sunrise she awakes to envelope in her scrubs
The scrubs she wears to the job which she loves
Although dangers restrict the safety of
Her health she places her passion above
Endlessly they come, tirelessly she stays
Mending, fixing, healing, seeing many pass away
Her head filled with images of the dead, peacefully they lay
As time runs beyond she loses hundreds each day
No family to reach out to for the disease they may convey
She’s their last sight, the last one to which they can say
Their dreams and hopes which death had mercilessly taken away
A few more moments to live they pray
She can’t let them go, she needs them to stay
While many have fallen, several sustain
Her hands are worn out, fingers in pain
All day, all night, in the hospital she persuades
With her hard work and refusal of defeat, many are saved
Families rejoice, thankful that they
Could see their loved ones once more out in the sun’s rays
All because she had determined and found a way
However, after hours when she enters the streets
Those of different races often retreat
Fearing for their lives as if she herself is a beast
Throwing racist comments and wary looks they sneak
What do they call her? They call her a disease
They name her after the very disease she treats
They blame her for its massacre and endless defeats
Pushing, abusing, and harassing with speech
She who spends her nights alone saving lives
Risking her own so they can leave with a smile
Yet she is torn down and put under the blame
For being the disease to which she cures is the same
Her skin, features, and ethnicity somehow define
What kind of person she is inside
Her origin is giving them a reason
To maul her and convict her of ‘treason’
While her and many others of her race
Have done nothing but protect those of the country they stay
While the people of the country in which she stays
Unfairly put her under the blame
Because she, she who spends her life helping those in need
To them, she herself is the disease
Authors note:
I wrote this poem after the string of racist attacks against people of East Asian heritage in America. These attacks against them were due to the COVID-19 disease which originated from China, so people blame East Asian immigrants, or those who are from there, of the disease. When I learnt about this, I was shocked that people would blame them for something like the disease. Just because their origin or ethnicity may be from that country, they can not be blamed for it as it is just where it started and many of them are US citizens and have lived here even before COVID-19 started, so to put the blame on them, it is completely insane.
After the BLM protests and police brutality against those who are black, to find another form of racism from the people of America to other citizens is so disappointing. Other breakouts of virus’ like the Swine flu, the Yellow fever, and The Spanish flu, have all originated from America but how often do you see people pushing and beating Americans for this? These citizens of our country go and harm other ones just because their race happens to be the same of the country from which the disease originated. Even if they have no correlation and have been following all precautions, they somehow get harassed.
Instead of harassing these people, instead if those American citizens can actually follow the correct precautions and social distancing measures without claiming trivial difficulties such as it’s ‘against their right’ or ‘taking away their freedom’ then maybe we could have decreased the growth and easily be happy right now like New Zealand and South Korea have. However, many decide to disregard these precautions and when the disease toll goes up, they blame the Chinese and hurt them- hurting them is not going to save lives.
I wrote this poem in the view of a Southeast Asian doctor. On the news, I had seen a story by a lady of Southeast Asian who talked about how patients shoved her or spat in her face because they refused to be cured by ‘a doctor who was the reason COVID was in America’. The correlation between COVID coming from China and those who are of Chinese ethnicity somehow being the reason behind it is just outrageous.
If people learned to stop hating each other and finally worked hard together to follow the practices, we would easily be past this point by now. The only reason we are stuck here is because of their disregard and impatience. Because of this, people who are following the procedures are paying for doing nothing. So we’ll stay here until people learn to finally look past race and look at the benefit of the human race. It’s only a matter of time until people wake up and smell the coffee, but until then, we’ll continue to suffer.
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