Enough

‘Enough,’ the boy coughed as he and his father walked down the cobbled street. ‘Enough,’ the father said, and rested his hand on his son’s shoulder. But the pleading in his voice and the darkness that had come to nestle underneath his eyes wasn’t enough, and the boy coughed again. The cough rattled in the father’s ears like an empty mosque. The boy coughed again and this cough rose up from the street, over the rows of orange roofs. The cough joined with other coughs, the coughs of a thousand whistling and wheezing children, and the father realised nothing would ever be enough, that he would never again experience that truly restful sleep he had once so blindly bathed in.