Fog of time

The fever of the virus comes in waves. Tiny branches of feeling disappear in a fog of someone else's doing. Dreams become like prisons and the weight of imagined air bears down on you.
I woke up early with the various viral members of my cold racing like busy Liliputians through my over-heated body. The artist lay next to me feeling no better but as the light crept through the blind I admired her absence of humbug or pretence. Indeed, if hypochondria is a form of pretentiousness, the artist is the most unpretentious person I know. Our daughter meanwhile coughed from across the small corridor while her brother slept as silent as a robin in the bunk below. Outside, a thick blanket of fog spread like the metaphor I have always been looking for across the great city. The hum of the traffic, lost in the fog, became a pleasant abstraction. The children remain excited.