Cake or Death

Some days are fine
some, a little bit harder

You try, so hard you try to tread the water enough to keep yourself above the surface, to keep everyone you can hold on to breathing for another day and yet when you sink, how you only remember that you failed. You feel an unwelcome burn in your chest, wonder if its tendrils are what's causing your head to ache, wonder if it's connected to that woozy feeling in your legs when you stand, but sometimes our minds play tricks on us and it doesn't seem fair to blame that on a virus you cannot see. Perhaps it's only weather.

But they shut the city down for another few weeks today, they closed the gates and twisted the daggers, they scared our hearts and it's hard to see through all the numbers anymore, because it turns out the numbers were people, only the supreme leader forgot what that meant. The strain in my chest does not. It counts, and counts, and counts.

You count.

That's something else, entirely.