I couldn't sleep.
Twelve days on my childhood bed and I still couldn't sleep in it. The mattress remembered a version of me that didn't exist anymore – the fifteen-year-old version that was grieving and small enough to curl into the corner and disappear. The woman lying in it now was too big for this room. Too full of things that didn't fit between these walls – his hands, his mouth, his eyes, the sound of his breathing when he fell asleep before me and didn't know I was listening.
2 AM. The house dark. Miles asleep down the hall. My mom in her room with the door closed and the flannel pajamas and whatever private war she was fighting between Richard's coldness and a boy who called twice a day.
I picked up my phone. Didn't think about it. The way you don't think about breathing or blink
