Breathe

The girl’s long legs curled rigidly over the soft ends of the loveseat. She took no notice as the street lights streamed through the windows, laying fidgety patterns across the carpeted floor and up the rounded lines of the couch. The darkened room’s sketchy illumination provided little to see. It didn’t matter. Her eyes closed tightly.

She was still, her arms pulled in and across her stomach, her legs fused in tight parallel columns. The even in-an-out of her breath distracted her from the drag of sore arm muscles. With steely intention, she mentally massaged away the throbbing ache of her neck and mouth. Her breath’s ebb and flow set her thinking forward, toward the next moment, and the next after that, each exhalation the chance to leave it behind.

Like angels balanced delicately above her nakedness, pure resolve gathered, then rained down on the girl. Tinny sounds from a kitchen radio seeped into her awareness, signaling the sweet release of her breathing to freer, less regulated inhalations. That malevolent haze, palpable just moments before, bumped and rippled to the corners of the room; an astounding resiliency rose anew. She denounce those last minutes for consideration another day, another time.

Maybe never.

Breathe.