The traffic lights, the coffee perfectly hot, the engine of my car gliding along in the morning, 

the buttons holding my blouse together, the soles of my shoes solid.

Wait for enough things at the same time, and every action becomes an effect.

Taking off a necklace. Watching a YouTube video on car repair. Drinking tea with jam we made this spring, when you told me that I just need a little more time. 

“I just want to tear away everything / that is irrelevant, and love you like a broken lever”

“Sick, in these days, means alone.”

Then the space between us got bigger. The first time I noticed he’d been detaching, I saw an opened tube of toothpaste in the first floor bathroom.

“Never trust a man who wears jewellery. It was her mother’s best advice, but she’d always wondered where one drew the line.”

“In that moment, he looked just like a boy to Irma. Head tilted down, palm turned out and facing her. She wanted to scoop his head between her hands.”

“Even as she thought it, she knew it was impossible to make everything overlap in a way that satisfied her.”

“I don’t know what the break-in meant to me at the time, but it was like a stray thread, a thread that, once I tugged upon it, unspooled my entire world and snagged open a portal through which I could escape.”