Tainted blood

The market of Blood

They built a market out of mercy.

A quiet, unlit bazaar where one needs

was measured in ounces and price.

The veins of the poor became currency—

a pulse auctioned in whispers,

a life signed away for a handful of coins.

Men lined up outside warehouses,

arms bare,

trusting the system that smiled

and took what it needed.

Each vial labeled donor,

each receipt marked hope.

But hope, like blood, can sour.

Behind the cold hum of refrigeration

and the click of bureaucratic pens,

A deal was made between silence and profit.

Blood flowed across borders

the way oil once did—

precious, powerful, and deadly

when tainted by greed.

The merchants of medicine

wore suits the color of apology.

They spoke of shortages,

of necessity,

of the good of the many—

but never one of the few

who paid with fever, with lesions,

with the slow unraveling of their cells.

They called it an accident,

a tragedy without blame,

but in the dim corridors

of the infected,

Truth grew like mold.

Someone knew.

Someone signed the shipment papers.

Someone looked away.

Families became statistics,

their stories reduced to charts

that never showed the color of grief.

Mothers buried sons who had never sinned.

Hemophiliacs, once promised freedom from bleeding,

bled inward,

silently,

for years.

The television said:

We are investigating.

The newspapers said:

A scandal unfolds.

But the blood kept moving—

from lab to lab,

from one unsuspecting arm

to the next.

No one stopped it.

No one could.

Because once blood leaves the body,

It remembers only the hunger

of the next vein.