i wake up at four thirty when the sky is still the color of a bruised plum and the air in the bedroom feels like wet wool clinging to my skin and my joints are already screaming before i even swing my legs out of bed to meet the cold floorboards (this is the only time of day i can hear myself think over the noise of the city) and i look at her sleeping there dreaming of things we can’t afford while i have this lead weight sitting in the bottom of my stomach that never goes away no matter how many miles i walk on the rebar or how many bags of concrete i haul until my shoulders feel like they’re being ground into dust by a mortar and pestle... i am twenty-five years old and i feel like an old house with a foundation that’s about to give way under the pressure of a thousand small secrets my sister is at the university three towns over and every time she calls her voice sounds like glass bells ringing in a storm so bright and clear and full of a future that i had to trade away for a weekly paycheck (the kind of future where you don't come home with oil under your fingernails that no amount of orange soap can ever truly reach) and she thinks the state is paying for her books and her housing and her chemistry labs but the state doesn't give a damn about girls from our zip code so i am the one pouring my life into a hidden bank account like water into a cracked bucket hoping it stays full enough to keep her afloat and keep her from ever having to see how the world looks when you’re standing at the bottom of a trench with a shovel in your hand sarah thinks we are drowning and she isn't wrong because our joint balance looks like a desert most months and she sits at the kitchen table with the utility bills spread out like a losing hand of poker crying about how we can’t even go out for a cheap steak once a month while i sit there with my jaw locked so tight my teeth feel like they might shatter into porcelain shards because i have four thousand dollars sitting in a digital vault she doesn't know exists (i am a liar and a thief stealing from our dinner table to build a bridge for someone else to cross) and every time i tell her i worked overtime but the boss is stiffing us on the bonus i can see the light go out in her eyes a little more until she just looks at me with this quiet pity that makes me want to put my fist through the drywall last tuesday i was standing in the rain at the atm behind the grocery store and the paper receipt felt like a death warrant in my hand because the numbers on it represent every hour of sleep i’ve lost and every vacation we never took and the way sarah looks at her old boots like they’re a personal insult she has to wear every day (the leather is peeling away from the sole like dead skin) and i wanted to scream at the machine to take it all back but instead i folded that slip of paper into a tiny square and hid it in the lining of my work boot where the smell of sweat and dirt would keep it safe from her prying hands... it felt like i was burying a body right there in the parking lot and nobody even looked up from their groceries we had this fight about a new radiator for the car because the old one is hissing like a snake every time we pull into the driveway and she was yelling about how i’m not trying hard enough and how i’m letting us slide into the dirt while she works double shifts at the clinic and i just stood there and took it because what am i supposed to say (i’m making sure my sister doesn't end up like us is a sentence that would end my marriage right then and there) so i just let her words hit me like hail on a tin roof and i went out to the porch to smoke a cigarette that tasted like ash and failure and i HATED her for being right and i hated myself for being the reason she was right the anger is a dull knife sawing at my ribs every time i see my sister’s posts online where she’s holding a coffee cup and wearing a sweatshirt with the school logo on it because she looks so clean and i look like i’ve been dragged through a coal mine and i hate her for it as much as i love her (the love is a heavy chain and the hate is the rust that makes it itch) and i hate sarah for wanting a life that i’m actively sabotaging with my silence even though i’m doing it for a good reason... or what i tell myself is a good reason at three in the morning when the house is too quiet and the guilt starts to crawl up my throat like bile my hands are covered in small white scars from the sheet metal and they look like a map of a country i don't want to live in anymore but i keep going back to the site and i keep clicking the transfer button on my phone when the direct deposit hits because if i stop now the bridge collapses and she falls back into the mud with us and that’s a weight i can't carry (even though the weight i am carrying is already snapping my spine in half) and sometimes i wish sarah would just find the login and the password so the whole thing would finally EXPLODE and i wouldn't have to be the one holding the match anymore... i just want to be done with the lying but the lying is the only thing keeping the roof over our heads and the books in my sisters hands i am sitting on the bathroom floor now with the light off and the cold tile pressing against my legs and i can hear the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen sounding like a low growl in the dark and i am so tired that my vision is blurring but i can't close my eyes because all i see are the columns of numbers and the way my wife’s face looked when she asked me if i was hiding something from her last night (i lied and said it was just stress from the job) and the lie felt like a mouthful of gravel that i had to swallow down until it sat heavy in my gut alongside everything else i’m never going to tell her because once you start building a wall like this you don't just stop until the whole world is blocked out and you're alone in the dark with nothing but the sound of your own heart beating like a trapped bird...