Carried: I.T.P. (Interstitial Thrombocytopenic Purpura) (II)

It reads as refusal wearing the clothes of fatigue: nothing new made, no appetite for what is ahead, a settled expectation that the rest will resemble the worst of what came before. The bitterness underneath is old and had reasons — it formed among people who dealt in contempt and used each other — and it has set into a position rather than passing like a mood. The clinical label is a shape, not a diagnosis; what the shape asks for is one thing wanted for its own sake.

I'm not going anywhere, and I've stopped pretending I want to.

Niobe, hardened into rock by grief and still weeping through the stone. The form implies a task: to get the grief moving again before the shape becomes permanent.