What happened when you woke up? she asked.  

I looked past my toes and into my therapist’s face. She looked at me, her eyes steady. She tapped her pencil against her notebook. Tap. Tap. Tap. Her hands looked like my mother’s.

Well, I said, everything was perfectly still.

She looked at me expectantly.

More still than usual. There were no birds. No breeze. No sounds.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

It was peaceful, I said. Surreal.

I switched the cross of my ankles and changed the part of her face behind my big toe.

And then? she asked.

It stopped. The silence…the stillness. A bird chirped. The curtain fluttered. My husband cracked eggs into a bowl.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

What do I do from here? I asked.

She looked at me and stopped tapping her pencil. She glanced out the window. She glanced like my father.

You wait, she said.

She looked back at me. I looked at her. The sun filtered through the curtains, sprawled across the floor, and made angles on the wall.

A cactus-shadow danced.

And we sighed.

In love and liminality,

Annie Rose