when this is all over I will run barefoot onto the grass and dance around the trees and and flowerbeds. If I could sing, I would but my movements will have to do the rejoicing for me.

Of course, there won’t be one moment when the bad stops and the good begins, not like a battering that switches off, the fists dropping or a tide that turns, waves subsiding with a drift away to the deep. Not like the anger in a voice that shouts and shouts before silence and acceptance, not like the child crying with fear in the night, the sudden cessation, the hush of sleep.

No, when this is all over it will dissipate quietly over months, a hardly perceptible timeline of rushing and pausing, going forwards and back until one day it will be gone.