Being an accounting of the recent and continuing pandemic and its various circumstances, from the perspective of an inhabitant of the regions lately called the Lost Quarter. Dates unknown.

Day Eighteen

The snow and cold continue. The sky is overcast and grey. Outside my window I can see the flakes dancing in the air as they make their steady descent to the ground. Going outside yesterday it felt like a day in mid-January, the wind with a hard edge and the snow implacable. April is the cruelest month, so they say, and there is nothing crueler than a winter that has overstayed its welcome.

I recall some years ago that the winter dragged on through most of April and even into May. It was an exhausting ordeal mentally. All you want is an end to the cold, to the snow, for the sun to shine and it actually to be warm.

That is what I want more than anything now as well. Winter can feel isolating enough, everyone bundled up and hurrying to a place where they can find warmth, but in our current predicament it is enough to make the strongest despair. My love curses the snow every time she looks out a window. That seems to give her some satisfaction, at least, even if the snow continues unabated.

The sight of barren fields is too much now. I long to see leaves on trees, for green grass and crops. In this time of devastation and death, the smallest signs of life can give hope.