Isolation

She chain smoked two cigarettes on the porch, huffing out battalion sized clouds blown through stagnant air. She squashed both beneath a kit' heel, picked them up in worn fingers, peeled them open, some parts she put in the compost, others in the regular rubbish. Then she placed two hands upon the kitchen counter, rested her entire weight on those hands and two hazel branch legs and let her head hang between her arms. Her scream was the thing of terrors, terrors of small boys after Halloween when a poorly paid, unvetted babysister let them watch House on the Haunted Hill. Her cry beat down upon the cries of lambs lost on Moors, the fight over eggs between birds, the cry of one murdered on a busy street and no one heard. The streets empty. Her detached home set apart from the rest. All in quarantine. All enduring. For now the loneliness was a buffet for gremlins. Gremlins with names. Names like depression, PTSD. Names like anxiety. Her house was filled with invisible company, as was his, as is yours.