and here’s what they won’t tell you about leaving: villains don’t press their sweating scalps into pillows, desperate for sleep, eyes pricked open by the gathered dust of that day, pulse hammering too fast into the future (anywhere better than here/now/him/then), skin braced against fingers that grope, insistent in the night. And here’s what finally broke my hope open—I wear a strange curtness; carry fright like a badge, resigned to the thought of you that follows me, cage to cage.