worry

3/16/2020

I had a very difficult time sleeping last night. The sudden, violent eruption of a child’s cough from downstairs came up through the floor and rattled around in the silent space of our bedroom. After about 5 minutes, cough cough cough going on and on, progressively worse, the desperate cough of a child that isn’t faking sickness, there was resounding silence. An adult woman had started sobbing, crying out harder and louder than the coughs had been and then the muffled sound of a man saying inaudible soothing words came in, punctuating the high pitched angry tears. I’ve seen this family before out walking their little sausage dog; the child seems to have one parent here and another parent that he spends time with elsewhere; they are often running around and noisily watching cartoons on weekends; they always seem happy and functional and normal and nice.

She eventually stopped crying and I eventually went to sleep after holding the back of chris’s shirt, wondering why she was crying and hoping for the love of fuck that Chris or I would not be coughing til our lungs gave out, so that we wouldn't give the neighbors reason to worry about what was going to happen to our little household.