A Silent Existence
written by: Anisha Mascarenhas
I sat alone in my room.
Flipping the channels,
the TV flickered in the dim light.
Chaos had ensued everywhere,
panic unfurled all around.
Day by day,
as months flew past,
dread slowly filled me.
“Maybe this is a dream,” I thought,
“a nightmare I could wake up from.”
but the harsh reality always brought me back.
When did it come to this?
was life ever this exhausting?
It didn’t make sense —
how I was just there,
not dead but not alive either,
just existing in a time that loops
over and over
in the all-consuming void.
With its darkness so vast,
it swallowed me whole.
Life stood at a standstill.
Days passed by,
like they were all the same
unknowingly blending into a haze,
stuck in my own mind like a maze.
Two years that seemed like eternity
now seem almost hard to remember.
I wondered,
would we ever be able to make it out of here?
Just one thing
kept me sane:
the hope to actually live again —
to move beyond merely holding on
to what was left
of the virus’s chaotic reign.
- A Silent Existence - December 5, 2025
