I was gone before six.
I did not plan it. Or I did plan it in the way that I plan things that I am not ready to admit I am planning, in the part of me that runs beneath the conscious level, the part that makes decisions while the rest of me is still pretending it has a choice. That part had been awake all night. I had not slept past the first hour, the deep hour, the one that had taken me under with her hand in mine and the sound of her breathing in the room, and then something had pulled me back up to the surface and left me there, staring at the ceiling with her beside me and the whole weight of what had happened pressing down on my chest like something physical, like a hand.
I lay there for a long time and I did not move and I did not think, or I tried not to think, which is a differe
