Sarah D. Silvey

I tried to draw for Inktober tonight but it was so abysmally bad, even I am giving myself a break. Mostly I’m just happy to still be able to talk, and breathe. It’s been an increasingly gross day. I’m watching this virus bloom in the warm culturing agent that is my body. My throat is closing up, a tiny series of trap doors, and with each one I lose another note to my voice. My coughs are coming more frequently now. Sometimes I have a sudden unpleasant awareness that I’m running out of air, drowning in my own fluids.

Why can’t colds leave as fast as they arrive?

Going for a walk with sick coworkers

K sounds like she has no nose

Uncharacteristically pepless.

H is physically weak

She nearly falls over trying to take a photo.

I cough and rasp my way through each sentence

But talk a lot more than usual.

Together we walk our fifteen minute break

Slowly

Cackling like old hags

Trying not to laugh too hard at ourselves

Lest we spur on another pulmonary problem.

“Flash forward thirty years,” I say,

“And this will be our constant reality.”

Let the healthy young men and women beware

The three plague sisters.

Flee from their slow, repulsive approach!