Suddenly, this dream you are having matches everyone’s dream. You are here with all the others, suspended and waiting to breathe again. Waiting for the next newscast with an advisory, a warning, a statistic, a lockdown. You are not alone and you are. Alone. You have to wonder if it’s better to breathe out or breathe in. Because it seems that the people who live here, and by here I mean all those who have thoughts, are collectively holding their breath because exhaling could be fatal to someone else, and inhaling could kill you.

Listen, it’s not the air’s fault that it’s become the enemy. You know that, yet you treat it with suspicion.

What you think you are waiting for isn’t what’s going to be. By now, you should have figured that out. It’s said that if you want to make god laugh, just tell him your plans.

So turn away from the screen and turn to a small pleasure. Try it. A momentary song or a square of dark chocolate or nothing at all. Look at your hands littered with a constellation of short stories. Write them.

The stars will reclaim you one day, so don’t worry. You can stop being jealous of the ones who got to go home before you. You think you are alone. Like everyone else, you are. So.

Go out to the river and let the snow fall on your face. Not the river nor the snow care about your loneliness or your fear. Listen to them. They are so much wiser than you are.