The first full day after we crossed the final threshold did not feel like a victory lap.
It felt like learning to walk in a body that had been permanently altered by the previous night’s weather.
I woke in Damian’s bed with the ordinary gray light of a Friday morning pushing at the curtain and the ordinary sound of the radiator ticking through its cycle, and for a long second the full weight of what we had done sat on my chest like a second blanket. Not regret. Not panic. Just the sheer factual density of it: I had asked for the next door. He had met me there. We had moved through the old wound’s territory with continuous consent and the lights on and the exit clear, and the structure had held. My body carried the residual tenderness of the night in places that had nothing to do with bru
