I get thirty-seven minutes a day to laugh, cry, lust, hate, love.

Thirty-seven minutes a day to Live.

There’s a bell toll, I wake up from the dusty brown corner of the room. My limbs weak and cramped from 23 hours of trembling. My mother in the other corner. A twitching, jerking shadow, quivering in silent agony.

I look away, she’s on a different Live rotation then mine. Her choice.

Time to Live.

I go outside squinting, the sun’s brightness a mockery.
People have already started Living. There’s a couple playing behind the bushes, an elderly man reading an old novel, a teenager, methodically beating another with a brick.

I walk by, I don’t judge their Living.

Thirty-seven minutes is so short.

I head to the hospital, where the volunteer attendants looks at me with passive sympathy. Still no cure, their eyes say.

I ignore them.

I enter the nursery. There’s a child there, about two. Eyes like mine. Mute and still.

I sit next to her and hold her hand in silence.
The bell tolls again.
Time’s up.