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 Forty Six

My allergies acted up for a time and the aftereffects linger throughout the day. It is like static in the background of the radio, present, but unnoticed, until at day’s end I am left exhausted and miserable. I want to claw my eyes out, dig into my throat and scratch the itch there. 

This is my annual springtime conundrum. After weeks of waiting for the cold and snow to dissipate, for winter to loosen its grasp and let the warmth of the new season in, all I want is to go out and enjoy the air. To smell the damp earth that holds the promise of verdant fields. To see the buds of leaves forming on trees.

Those goddamn trees. The air is choked with their pollen. Polluters every one. And those fields. Poison once they come to bloom. I can feel the itch of them even now. Now I have a choice. Do I tempt fate and go out, breath in that putrefying air? Or do I stay within, quarantining myself from the very air I breath? It is a cruel fate: a quarantine within a quarantine. If nothing else it will keep me from the dread lord’s grasp for a time.