A terrible thing about the nature of deep despair, wanting more than anything else for the world to stop, to just stop, grind to a halt, wind down, cease, desist; so that all becomes still and silent and perhaps somewhere in the sudden nothing there will be room for you to take a deep breath, a long, cold rush of air, a quiet inhale where you can expand your lungs, your skin, your thoughts until the staggering cramped wrongness unfolds like a paper bird, and you breathe. You breathe and the moment stretches wherever you are, time-travelling in the supermarket, the nursery, the cafe, the pavement. You breathe and maybe you count down from ten to zero and the world, the world steeped in famine and oil goes mercilessly on, turning in the terrible depths of space.