The rain has been dripping through your apartment ceiling for so long that you no longer hear it as weather, and I stopped noticing it as anything natural months ago. It sounds like a clock now, one that measures hunger instead of time, and every drop hits the dented metal pot beside my son’s mattress with a hollow sound that reminds me how close everything is to breaking.
My son is burning up again, and I can feel the heat before I even touch him. At eight years old, my boy named Caleb should be outside scraping his knees and racing across the cracked courtyard, but instead he lies under a faded blanket with flushed cheeks and fast breathing that terrifies me.
Every few minutes he shivers so hard the mattress springs tremble beneath him, and each movement slices through my chest like something sharp and invisible. On the floor nearby, my daughter Lily sits cross legged in a worn pink dress, brushing the tangled hair of a broken doll with one arm missing while humming softly as if the world is still gentle.