June 23, 2020

I open the sliding glass door to air out

our quarantined apartment. The trade winds

are dying, and the sky is the bluest I’ve ever seen.

No planes overhead, fewer cars on the freeway.

They say, the ozone layer is healing, pollution

at an all-time low. Yet thousands will succumb

to Covid-19 today, another black man killed

by cops, another suspended from a tree in strange

weather, another peaceful protest dispersed

by tear gas. Plumes of dust from the Sahara desert

storm towards us. Will it trigger my daughter’s

asthma? How do hospitals decide who gets the last

available ventilator? Whose lives matter enough

to breathe in this suffocating atmosphere?

Craig Santos Perez is an indigenous Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guam. He is the author of five books of poetry and the co-editor of five anthologies.