I slept on the couch last night, rumpled as a blanket. Lying in the dark living room, trying to absorb the sounds of the rain, the rabbits, and the cats, despairing at sleep, my memory flashed of when I would wear blood red and midnight black stockings, wear them down the street just to the corner store, as if I might as well. Late at night, how do these things happen? I am exhausted, tired of being intimidating. I know what is coming. This is as predictable as pain. He stands in my way, “I won’t let you.” as if his resistance will prove something, as if this is somehow the ideal. I think about how I’ve been trying to make the apartment into somewhere to come back to, a place of colour and grace, looking at him standing in my bedroom doorway, and refuse to simply push past his hands. This is meant to be my home, and so I will make it such, and in this place, I will sleep where I please.