Rise

But the crick in your lung returns. Is now the time to scour your apartment for those sedatives you took from your grandmother's closet after her body no longer lived there? Or would a nap suffice? Your muscles scream for more time along the river, to stretch and exert and tired themselves out isntead of your mind, but the little fire in your throat says maybe best not. You wonder what it feels like to die alone.

The ginkgos double in size. So do you, but that's less welcome. Every creative listserv with your name on it yells about what you could be writing now, the stories you could tell. The typewriter on the windowsill is dusty. Everything is dusty. You try to remember what it's like to fall in love, to be wrapped up in a typhoon that holds you upside down and shakes you and still you do not want to be let down: you cannot now even imagine. Everyone outside the window is wrapped in a mask now, or their obvious lack of access to one. We've used the word strange so many times to describe the situation that it's lost its meaning. Strange is the new normal. Maybe the room is just running out of air.

Better the room than your lungs.

You put on your combat gear. Decide to fight another day.