I didn't sleep.
Not entirely I drifted in and out of something thin and unreliable, the kind of half-rest that left me more tired than waking would have. Every time I surfaced I checked the window, checked the door, checked the specific quality of the silence in the flat for anything that didn't belong there.
There was nothing.
There was nothing all night.
That was its own kind of exhaustion the waiting for something that didn't come, the body staying braced past the point where bracing was useful, running its threat-assessment on a loop because nobody had told it the crisis had passed. Because I didn't know if the crisis had passed.
I got up at six-fifteen. No point lying there.
The morning had a texture I recognised.
Everything slightly louder than it should have been. The buzz of
