She breaks her gallop, straddles the treadmill, and stabs at the phone keyboard in answer to the blinking update prompt:<\/p>\n
\u201c2017, I\u2019m going to fucking crush you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Likes and hearts immediately balloon from her feed. She is inclined to stand and watch, but the machine counts down on her absence and chases her back into pace.<\/p>\n
The Holy Cross Wilderness is out there, through the heavy glass windows, still obscured by the single dark hour a mother of two small children can find to be alone.<\/p>\n
A flickering reflection of a television in the window trains her eye to the red banner that lost its red long ago. Where a drone drones on. And hope is snuffed by the tiny fingers of a tiny man.<\/p>\n
The predator of non-domestic realities leaves shock in the dust and threatens to overcome her. She squints into the dawn with resolve, punches a command into the machine, and the ground moves faster.<\/p>\n
Lipids light up. Bonfires spark in the streets of her bones. Her soul finds a heartbeat that hits the earth like a mustang hoof. Her belly cackles in emptiness, but her appetite for anything comforting, not the gritty flavor of justice, has extinguished.<\/p>\n