My knuckles are still stretched tight but I focus on keeping my shoulders loose. I shut the door reflexively, I don’t even look up. Watching the horizon. Watching the sunlight. Watching my children. Anything. And this cycle will end too. I want to fight it, still, that animal part of my brain imprinted on this, bellowing from chains in the deep woods. We’re going to grow from this and you’ll shut up and accept what you can’t control, little beast. But I hear you scream, a sound so big my bones won’t let it out.

I know you hear me screaming and that it’ll never matter again. The kind of alone these kinds of animals need. Unselfconsciously devoid, a flatline felt in the eyes. That’s the tell. Another death to forget me by.