Heart rib cage pencil sketch with quote

The driver, a man with a crossword folded into his sun visor, watches her in the mirror and says nothing. You walk after her at a careful distance across wet pavements, past shuttered bakeries and a launderette still breathing warm steam. She stops under a lamp, and you see her side rise and fall, the ribs showing through the thin pelt the way they do on any creature that has been hungry longer than it admits. You think of what you said to your sister last week, that nobody can keep anything they love, and how much thinner it sounded out loud.

At the railings above the water she gathers herself and looks back once, the way cats do when they want to be sure you are still the sort of person who lets things go. Then she is over the wall and down the bank, a rust-coloured flick into the reeds. The canal holds the streetlights in long shaking bars. You stand there longer than makes sense, hands in your coat, until a delivery van grinds past and reminds you that the city keeps its own hours.

You walk home the long way. The fox is probably working her route along some wall by now, unbothered by anyone's idea of a cage. You unlock your door, leave the window open a crack just in case, and sleep better than you have in weeks.