Cartoons taught me to laugh at violence. To see it as pattern, rhythm, inevitability. But back home, the patterns were bloodier.

As I drift to sleep, I wonder who the real me is and who’s the imposter.

There is a backstory here, of course, to how they became Husband and Wife.

It’s a question I have long thought about and resolved. Of course, I’m Black, I think.

I return to the perfect green field, the perfect blue sky, where it feels impossible that anything has ever ended, or ever could end.

To be haunted from the inside, from your own mind, is so much harder than being threatened by a real person.