After Papa got sick, too, they took him out, and now there is a different man in his spot. I don’t know his name, but sometimes he shakes soundlessly. There’s a boy somewhere close who does nothing but cry and I want to tell him to stop, that he should save all the moisture he can because we won’t have any more water for a long time. I want to tell him I know this because after they took my Papa, I cried until I felt all wrung out, like a used washcloth.
Here there is hot breath and foul odors from too many people in too small of a space. I feel like I am breathing in others’ expelled breath, and sometimes my heart beats so hard and fast because I don’t think there is enough oxygen in here. I smell pee, and sweat, and vomit, and all the other fluids that come out of a person, whether they want them to or not. We all leak, eventually. Here it has nowhere to go, so we sit in it. We lie in it. We rock in it. I worry sometimes that maybe we’ll drown in it. Drown in a boat, in the sea.