Same 

Wasted
Wasted limbs, wasting to the temporal bone
Wasted chances to find
retrovirus
smoldering
in her bloodstream, cycling through bone marrow
for years & years like a spinning record that is all discordance and no harmonies
“Me cuesta respirar”
She has rolled through urgent care, passed by in the ER
Wasted chances to test her
10 years too late
I remind myself
It is 2021 and not 1988
Her nickname translates to “Dove”
Aching to fly, flutter free
“I can’t breathe”
Through the fungus in her lungs and a stifling, oppressive weight 

Same
“Aren’t we all the same?
Don’t we bleed the same?”
He asks as the car radio blares 

The radio argues George Floyd mattered less because of his heart or COVID or drugs
Here is an open secret:
He mattered less because his skin color made him less than
Tune the radio out.
“We’re all human,” he says, he pleads
I nod, my chest heavy
From shared pain and maybe
too, the remnants of COVID lingering in my lungs 

Harlem in the streaky windows, a drive by swirls of colors in street art
Murals of black faces cut with yellow daffodils and butterflies 

HIV results return
She confronts them head-on
But still the shock
“I’ve only been with one man and he is dead”
Prison at 35, condemned at birth.
Her silver jewelry glints as she turns
Looks at me squarely 

Takes in my brown skin and says
“You remember that you’re beautiful.”
I blink
Then we go to work,
Work our systems tossed to the side And said “this is not important” 

Tired. 

Tired
of living out
the same
stories. 

Each story same title:

“how we fail
people of color
every day.”

From the artist: I have been thinking a lot about the disparities that come to light when a pandemic or epidemic has a society in its grasp, and this poem is the result. They are disparities that were always there, of course, and that we never seem to do a very good job of overcoming.

Shaoli Chaudhuri is a second-year infectious diseases fellow at Mount Sinai. She completed her internal medicine training in NYC and worked in COVID ICUs and floors when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit in March 2020. Click here to read her COVID diary published in The Washington Post’s “The Lily.”