OUR LAST NIGHT TOGETHER
I couldn't sleep.
I had packed my bag — everything folded and placed with the careful precision of someone who needed their hands to do a task because their mind wasn't fit to be left unsupervised. My mother's photograph was wrapped in a shirt. The drawing folder. Eleanor's cash counted and divided — half in the bag, half back in the box on the kitchen table because taking all of it felt wrong in a way I couldn't fully articulate but didn't need to. Everything zipped and closed and was set beside the door.
And then I lay on the bed, and I stared at the ceiling, and I didn't sleep.
The water stain wasn't there — this ceiling was smooth and perfect, nothing to look at, no shape to find. I looked at it anyway. I tracked the specific quality of the darkness an
