Sara made her first attempt to go out since the incident and all our vigilance had been relaxed by time. She shifted keys from hand to hand while she was straightening a straight watchband. Then she seemed to ask permission, so we complied. Candles burning down. The clocks are all exhausted now from the weight of being watched. And all those prior scenes, the stomach pumps, the bleached-out sleeves, weren’t as far away as we thought. And we were failing to acknowledge what’s so obvious, all the signs we’ve seen before…like Sara’s black pyjamas peeking out from clothes that she plucked off of the bathroom floor. Suicide can be this subtle thing that keeps burrowing through your routine, until you’re not eating and phones just ring themselves to sleep. And now it’s all becoming clear that any victory we claimed this year was just us redefining death for our relief. Candles burning down. The clocks are all embarrassed now, by the weight they’ve been assigned. Like when you made a tool of a turtle-shaped wading pool and stripped all innocence from our lives. Chorus. And I’ve called up every place that she would go, and nobody is picking up the phone. But in the early morning hours when ours starts to ring, it hits me what they might not want to know.