THE STILLNESS

She wasn’t frozen.
Not really.

She was standing so still that even the wind decided not to disturb her.

Behind her were echoes of slammed doors and whispered threats, the shrapnel of everything inherited but never healed, a family tree with barbed-wire branches.

Around her was the loud injustice of now, a world vibrating with outrage and contradiction.
Everyone talking.
No one listening.

Ahead was fog.
No signs.
Only a path she was expected to guess her way through.

So she stood.
Still.

Not as surrender.
Not as defeat.
As pause.

She didn’t want to carry history anymore.
She didn’t want to fix the present only to ruin the future differently.
She just wanted to be quiet long enough to hear her own voice again.

They called it indecision.
She called it breathing.