so strange outside, it's like a dream. am i awake? the fear says i am, but the fear's also in my sleep. i'm trying not to collapse inside. i understand why people want to return to normal, though it's an illusion—they must know it too. it eludes words, even thoughts, it's gathering butterfly molecules that slip invisibly through the net, the hand, the eye, the skin. what we are gathering is already in. those people are just biding time, thinking in fables. nothing is normal about survival. sirens outside rush along the midway. there is no cure, there is this emergency from which there may be no emergence, dogs and flowers but no human spring, lockdown, the struggle to survive, to stave off the virus, to not collapse, to dream of mercy wake to one, to another, today.