1,096 Days

Doing breathing exercises, trying to reach sleep
But they feel like yet another thing to do
To worry about forgetting to do
To not do well enough.

Shapes flicker and coagulate behind closed lids.
Swirling, lilac and lime and teal and orange
Like oil on water.

Giving up and opening my eyes
I can feel my blood fizzing through my fingers
Pulse loud in my throat.

Sometimes I picture myself crawling up the sides of our block
Peeling it away from itself
The night air fresh on my cheeks.

I would move quietly.

I don’t want to frighten anyone
Any more than they are already frightened.

I would move quickly.

Between the little squares of light.
The tableaux.
Little acts of living
Framed in HPL.

In these spaces we breathe
And we remember those whose breath stopped
In the spaces where they should have been safest of all.

1,096 Days

1,096 days.

We turned out all the lights
The blinds clattering away to free the windows.

We illuminated our room in green.

Looked out into the darkness
At the windows around us
Into the windows of our phones
At so many green squares alongside ours.