"Emotion Epidemic" by Taylor Frick

There is a virus among us

Invisible to the human eye

But it is extremely dangerous,

For it makes us all blind.

It likes to spread by twos and threes,

Making the lone wolf safe.

The skeptics stay in quarantine

Too scared to play the game.

The symptoms are truly ghastly,

Enough to make you cringe.

Some never outgrow the pain

And start to seek revenge.

Its victims claim to have their heart

Stolen or split in two.

The brainwashed hope to find the virus

And get infected too.

While to some it does no harm,

Others get bruises all over their arms.

Their screams corrupt the purest child

And slowly drive them mad,

Making merely strangers out of Mom and Dad.

Some get trapped inside a ring,

Too scared to make a sound,

Hopeless in their suffering,

Their smile now a frown.

Despite there being casualties, some seem to embrace it,

Saying that “everything happens for a reason”.

The lucky ones roam any place you can think of,

Immune to the virus Homo sapiens call “love”.