Ashley and I made shared, customized Spotify playlists and gave them names like Death to Incels (Bikini Kill, Hole, M.I.A.), Hold My Drink (Lizzo, Nicki Minaj, Megan Thee Stallion), Sad White Boys Anonymous (Sufjan Stevens, Sam Smith, Bob Dylan). The morning after the first sleepless night, I put on Ashley’s playlist masterwork, Impeach President Krump, turned up the volume a notch higher than usual, and set out at a pace. It felt good to move, even if I was exhausted. I passed all the familiar homes on my route, a copy-and-paste combination of bungalows and two-storey houses of tan-painted stucco with faux shutters and red clay roof tiles, pebbled front yards filled with yucca, chubby succulents, and curving stone walkways that led to front doors hiding below blocky archways. A few streets over, I began to pass the upper-income homes aspiring towards a kind of Disney-esque royalty with medieval turrets, New England dormers, and Edwardian gables, an architecture unmoored from time and taste.

I’m still not quite sure how I let myself become suburbanized. It had always been a goal of Paul’s to own a ‘proper’ house, the kind of house that he had spent years building. I guess there was a sort of poetry to that. We each wanted things for Ashley that we never had as kids. He wanted her to have quiet, space, bike paths. I got her a vibrator for her fourteenth birthday. I allowed Paul to persuade me that I’d reached the age where I required proximity to nature. Small birds disembowelling rodents in my backyard. Large expanses of sky. I told myself—life is more vivid out here than in the city. I’ve come to realize that isn’t the case. It’s more like how even a whisper sounds loud in a silent room.

As I rounded the corner back onto Cascadia Drive, I came across a crew of workmen in high-vis vests. They were standing around and assessing a forty-foot black pole they had just installed, a few paces back from the road. I found something about the tall pole disquieting. Unearthly, even. Like an alien monolith. As I stood there, my neighbour Linda appeared, walking her ghost dog. I’m not sure what breed of dog it was, but it was very stark and very grey. In the morning mist, it seemed almost spectral. I don’t know what would possess someone to buy such a haunted-looking animal. Linda wandered over to me, arms crossed, and eyes fixed on the pole. She groaned and shook her head.

Well there she is.

I assumed she was referring to the pole, and not to me. What is it? I asked.