muscle memory

Six months to her anniversary and the birthday of her favorite childhood actor. She wasn’t anywhere near where she had thought she would be, but that place felt even further from what she wanted now. Funny how life bends that way. 

Eilene took a drag from her invisible cigarette, a nasty nervous habit she had that was possibly even more addictive than the smoking itself. Her lips pursed as she sent empty smoke into the air. 

Here she was. 

The world felt crazier than ever. But somehow she felt calm. She was nowhere near where she had wanted, but she was so much closer to who she wanted to be. Not the divorcee, without a job, forty-two years old, fake smoking cigarettes, but a woman who had left her husband to chase, quite literally nothing but herself, and traded her addiction for just muscle memory instead. 

She brought her pointer and middle finger to her lips once more, as if taking one last imaginary drag of the life she had left, and in a forceful exhale, she released it all into the same wild sea of open air, she too now faced.

-b

July 10, 2020

Photo Credit: Ross Sneddon