I saw it happen from the window. One by one the business closed. The city halted, afraid to crumble. I, too, afraid to crumble. It was on my tenth day of illness I met someone who believed me. Ten days out of my body. Ten days wrong. Ten days crying of night, afraid to die as my bronchioles constrict again. I rushed you to the hospital on Shabbat, seven days ago. A whole week later they decided to listen to us. How fast a virus spread in a week Watching the world end has a tragic lack of beauty to it as the fearful scramble to maintain the integrity of systems unsustainable. We really never learn. They wore haz-mat suits like the one Naomi Campbell was modeling right before shit really hit the fan. I want to say the first woman I met was kind, but no feeling can transcend the chasm that creates, a chasm far wider than six feet. There were three chasms that day. We were the sick ones: the vectors. It always comes down to a vector. We had the symptoms they wouldn't speak to; on the front lines of discovering what this thing meant. If anyone knew the answer to that question, it was we. Every day there's a new indicator that something's wrong. Every night I pray to G-d, scared of what happens next. I won't let us die, that's all I know certain. But although we were sick together, here I was alone. I was sanitized and escorted inside where I waited for my next visitor: a probe to my nasal cavity. The room was entirely empty, save for the monotonous drone of an air purifier. He left when he was finished and I held still in his violation until I was escorted out. No one I met that day had a name. I don't remember if I did. I drove home slowly and quietly, still ill as before, throbbing from the inside. They deployed the National Guard. I know this because the tanks are normally parked on the mountainside near my home. I wonder to where they have gone. What terror they plan contribute to an already terrified ground. I pretend not to be scared that we'll never see the outside again, but I can't pretend this is normal. We have ten lifetimes to live, to love in the time of apocalypse.