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Laying on the Floor

On the bare floor of the now cleared out apartment, Valarie lay as still as she could. Her clothes had felt cumbersome and false, projections of assumed expectations, so she shed them. The fan circled lazily doing little more than giving urgency to the dance of the dust motes in the afternoon sun.

Her breathing came slow and heavy in the humid air. It was like this every August and always reminded her of being thirteen when she visited her grandparents’ farm. The memory wasn’t a bad one but tended to intrude on the present with a stuffy brutishness. The present had never felt more cluttered.

Questions of identity swirled in her head. She no longer felt like the same eager young woman who’d come down to Hattiesburg for school. That confident, capable, established woman she’d always wanted to be seemed just as far off, almost unattainable. The incompleteness of journey felt shameful, making her want to hide. Hiding felt wrong and weak.

For now, before the next adventure, she just wanted to breathe.

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