My mother-in-law blocked the entrance to my new apartment and screamed that her son had bought it for her, ordering me to leave.

Lights spread across the city like proof of other lives continuing in every direction.

I thought about how people like Blake and Evelyn do not take your life all at once.

They move in through assumption first.

A key.

A joke.

A drawer.

A bill.

A mother in your robe.

A signature copied from one page to another.

They rely on confusion, guilt, and domestic pressure continue reading …