Thought is an infection. In the case of certain thoughts, it becomes an epidemic.

How full of trifles everything is! It is only one's thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.

It is deep January. The sky is hard.
The stalks are firmly rooted in ice.

It is in this solitude, a syllable,
Out of these gawky flitterings,

Intones its single emptiness,
The savagest hollow of winter-sound.

We're evaluating a case of meningococcemia, a bacteria that can cause meningitis or a blood infection. When someone gets infected with that bacteria, half of the cases develop meningitis, a third develop infections of the blood.

Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.

The exceeding brightness of this early sun
Makes me conceive how dark I have become.