We thought we could outrun, outsmart, and outdo what came before. We drove in our spikes and built our foundations, believing that we could get away with it. That our homes would stand.

We were so certain we could pull it off, that we could just love, too. That we could lay skin to skin and say those words, birth our own worlds without incurring debt or having to pay the debt they left, without them dogging our steps, gnawing at our heels, crawling into our beds with their breath the way it smelled.

We were so sure. So we went on, shaking their teeth from our ankles, picking up our pace, ripping down the first attempts and starting again, sure that it was just an odd angle, a slight miscalculation…

We’d get it right next time. We just had to promise to do it better, be more careful, try harder, be truer…

They crawled between our sheets and left their stain. So even as we pull back the covers in blazing light, and scrub every surface until it stings, flakes of old skin still catch and thicken under our nails.