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All night long, my heart pounds in my chest, nausea pulsating through my veins.

The monitor has already revealed we both have very high blood pressure. We believe it’s stress-induced.

All night long, I lay awake, watchful of my beloved’s breathing, intervening whenever it seems her dreams may take her back to those moments of violence.

Are we in crisis? Is this what crisis looks like? Or is this just the precursor to something much worse?

Certainly, these teenage tantrums feel much more extreme than I remember them, thirty years ago.

Perhaps my parents would correct me, but I can’t imagine any of us ever dared deliver such a torrent of unrestrained bile back then.

We raged, no doubt, but we wouldn’t even have known this vocabulary. The language of extreme misogyny, learned out there in the gutter.

When tempers calmed, we might have outwardly forgiven, but these lead-filled arteries relate another tale altogether.

We’re utterly heartbroken, distraught, fearful of what comes next.

Is the imagery of extreme violence merely a cathartic release for one enraged, or must we be on guard lest it one day be made real?

Tonight, we are on edge. It’s probably for the best that I cannot sleep, lest these palpitations morph into something worse.

Let me stand guard of my beloved all night long. This is the sickness of the brokenhearted, ripped rudely from their serenity.

Where did this all come from, we ask ourselves? Where did we go wrong? What have we done to deserve this?

Yes, we’re broken tonight. Utterly broken. Will we see the morning light?