After a while, the days turn into the sounds of airplanes tearing through the sky, cars decisively going nowhere, birds from Bambi, the sunlight oozing from the blinds. They become a living, breathing thing, a beast with its tail wrapped around the wall of your house. If the walls aren’t safe, then lock yourself in your room, and if your room isn’t safe, under your desk. Wait for the cars to slow like a dying pulse, wait for the light to fade like closing eyes, wait to breathe. Feel something. Wait to be alive. It squeezes until the walls cave inwards like rubber. Tell yourself it’s nothing, but its hot breath rattles the curtains, and you remember how you used to kill them when they woke. Fearless by breakfast. Unstoppable by brunch. You never lost as long as you faced them, but you’re under the desk, waiting to breathe.