The next morning, Ronda woke feeling as though she had slept beside an open wound.
Not fresh enough to bleed dramatically.
Not healed enough to forget.
Just there.
A steady ache under everything.
She lay still for a few seconds, staring up at the slow fan above her, listening to the familiar sounds outside; a bucket scraping concrete, a woman calling to a child, a radio playing too loudly from the next compound. Ordinary sounds. Harmless sounds.
She envied them.
There was something cruel about how ordinary the world remained when a person’s heart had become complicated. The sky did not dim for heartbreak. Buses did not pause for emotional confusion. Rent did not wait because love had arrived in the wrong place wearing the wrong consequences.
And that, more than anything, helped her
