The night my life cracked open, it wasn’t with shouting, or broken furniture, or doors slammed hard enough to rattle pictures off the wall.

It was quieter than that.

A click.

A lock turning.

The kind of sound you don’t forget because it tells you, in its small, metallic way,
“You’re outside now. And you’re on your own.”

Mark said he just “needed space.”
But I knew better.

Space was the word he used when he wanted distance without guilt.
Distance without responsibility.
Distance without having to admit how easily he could decide my fate.