group today.
I read it twice.
Then I set the phone facedown on the table.
For a long moment, I listened to my own apartment: radiator hiss, refrigerator hum, snow tapping glass.
No boots in the hallway.
No voice ordering me to explain myself.
No one standing between me and the door.
I made tea. I opened the old box where I kept the few things I had taken from home: my father’s watch, a photo of him holding me on his shoulders, and the tiny brass key from the model boat he never finished.
I placed the key on the windowsill.
Outside, Cleveland softened under snow.
Inside, nothing shattered.
And for the first time in years, I slept with the lights off.
