Mornings are the hardest. Mornings make daggers in Hope’s eyes. Mornings bring her up from the soft white nothing, the underside of his arm, its depth half-imagined to have been a cavern overnight. Mornings strip the reek of his sweat from her thighs, dig bits of his skin up, up, up from beneath her fingernails. In the morning, she falls.

Down from the bed, bared bravely to the sunshine,