I have come to think there is a kind of poetry in that, though it did not feel like poetry at the time.

He had tried to take my life with a lie.

I kept it with a filing cabinet.

And every document I secured, every account I confirmed was mine and would stay mine, every trust I put another wall around, was a small brick laid back into the fortress he had spent so long learning to slip inside — until, by the end of the second night, there was no longer any gap left for him to fit through.

He just didn’t know it.