another missive from the Covid house

Tomorrow will be a week. I am so zoned out on dextromethorphan that I think I should just take it on the regular. I have, for me, endless patience and understanding. I’m taking everything in stride. Why would I ever, why did I ever bark at spoons and dishtowels?

Life has become a slow journey on a swiftly flying horse. I cough. My throat hurts. I wonder at tiny things, little gnats that seem gathered at the lights, at the windows, but only phantoms, no-see-’ems. The ghosts of the world at large, aft, starboard, diaphanous, a little glitter left on the coffee table. Someone laid a cool palm upon my face.

And in the midst of this season of the body breaking down and building up and breaking down and lying still in the nighttime somehow-green darkness, I have lost my taste for water. If I were undrugged, this loss would seem perhaps overwhelming for there is no other taste in the world I enjoy so much as good water.

But now that I am made of paper and gauze and hospital corners I can only observe each thing with the curiosity of one both of and not of this world.

I always said I’d never, ever, sit down on the rock in the middle of the river. But now I feel that I am sitting on that very rock, this one, a most comfortable seat and the night will close in soon and I will not be moved and the days will pile up like stones around me and I will not be moved.