It was Wednesday morning and she sat on her window pane, holding a cup of coffee that had already gotten cold. This used to be a weekend thing, waking up early, going into the kitchen quietly, careful not to wake up her housemates, making a fresh cup of coffee and climbing onto the window of her bedroom to watch her neighborhood slowly wake up. It used to feel good, waking up early of her own will, not because she had to, and enjoying the first few quiet hours of the day, before everyone else got up.

Now it was sad. The sun was long up by the time she snoozed her last alarm, and the street was busy and loud by the time she poured some leftover coffee one of her housemates had made in the morning, before heading out to work.

She no longer had anywhere to go to. She had been fired three weeks ago. They told her they were sorry to have to let her go, but they had to cut costs. She didn’t feel like they were sorry. She wasn’t sorry either, not really. She knew she should be worried about where her next paycheck would come from, but she couldn’t muster up real concern. Just a faint but constant sense of anxiety. She woke up with it, it was there when she drank coffee, when she had to read the same page of her book over and over again because she couldn’t focus, when she tried in vain to fall asleep.

She figured since she didn’t have a job, it made sense to just quarantine herself, indefinitely. It was a good excuse - no one questioned it, even though the lockdown had been long lifted and the recommended quarantine time for those who may have contracted the virus was only two weeks. No one cared enough to count.

So there she sat on the windowpane, cold coffee in hand. Her mind made no plans.