These are the sounds the air makes at midnight:
• The air purifier hoovering our bedroom at full tilt
• My partner next to me breathing in a slow, steady rhythm
• The cat’s occasional grumble
• My breath collecting clean air from the inside of an N-95 mask
• A wind tunnel somewhere — whoosh — the city, it’s alive!
• Ventilators and Respirators, from hospitals miles away
• The neighbors commiserating over bottles of red
• The trees shake as the wind whips and rattles the sky