Carried: Malaria (Intense fever caused by parasites)

It holds the world as hostile terrain and the body follows, cycling between burning vigilance and collapse. Safety is treated as unavailable in principle, so no ground reads as solid and no season passes without expecting the next attack. This is what comes of being the one clear-eyed member of an invasive household that could not be named as the problem — the accuracy was real, and it hardened into a permanent posture; what the shape asks for is one place, small, where the guard is genuinely unnecessary.

Nothing around me is neutral. It's me against everything, and everything has better numbers.

Ishmael in the wilderness, hand against every man and every man's hand against him, surviving outside the settlement. The form implies a task: to discover whether the wilderness is still the wilderness.