During the last year the reach of my steps, my reading, my ability to keep up, be in touch, have noticeably diminished. As connections into the well-er, by which I mean more energetic, world, dip, slip, die away, I find myself beheld by an ever smaller group of people: mostly others who are chronically ill, others who have M.E.
Sometimes home feels like a snow dome with air holes. On better days I press my nose against its plastic pane. When politics lurch grimly towards gripe and tribalism or some stress-not-care dispensing institution kicks us anew, my heart beats so fast it bucks against the cover like a mule with a bur up its bum.