I come downstairs the light of the early morning on everything. I just gotten up to pee like I always do about seven and thought maybe I'll stay up.

Get in a early start.

So I put on the water, I dump yesterday's coffee out of the French press, I turn on the

news, I feel like an adult.

I lean on the sink, I look at the reflection of my body, deformed in the curved chrome of the

toaster. I suck my belly in. The news is a list of deaths.

And as I listen, a feeling of guilt simmers under my skin and I slowly become aware of the yellow brown streaks in the

corners of the kitchen. Emily's plants. It was like the one thing I was

supposed to do was take care of them, but I might as well have been sent

by the government as a plant assassin.

I guess the succulents are holding out.

I just imagine them hunkered down in ditches singing their little songs to keep up morale.

Everybody.

I'm in the middle of the water.

I'm in the middle of the water. I'm in the middle of checking the plants in the living room when I make a complicated discovery.

Some of the plants that I haven't killed are in fact plastic mixed in with the real plants.

So this terrifying thought comes,

maybe I have killed all the actual real plants.

So I frantically begin doing the thumbnail

through the leaf test to anything that's still green.

Less than half are fake, which is relieving, but also means that the survivors now have significant

injuries in addition to their malnourishment.

...