Woman | Girl V

A person, finally whole.

Clara laughed, and the laugh cracked into something raw. She wasn’t strong. She was a girl in a grown-up’s body, terrified of the dark, of being alone, of the silence where a partner’s breathing used to be. girl v woman

She drove not to her minimalist apartment (the woman’s domain, all beige and “tasteful”) but to the old playground at Memorial Park. The swings were still there, rusted chains groaning in the damp. She sat on one, her work heels digging into the wood chips. For a long moment, she just swung, barely moving. The girl in her wanted to pump her legs, to fly so high the chains went slack. The woman whispered about dignity, about a thirty-year-old in a pencil skirt pumping on swings like a child. A person, finally whole