[open] loneliness has always been with me, any

[astra]

There is a breath of stillness and then --

She cries out in pain, her knees buckling under some enormous pressure. She squeezes her eyes shut, though she doesn’t know why. The ground is unforgiving, but so is the thing she is trapped under.

And she feels fear, so potent that she knows it must be hers. It swells up so dangerously in her chest that, for a moment, she thinks that this is what’s preventing her from drawing breath. She does not understand what it means to be crushed or all the way the body responds to it.

She’s never known pain like this before. A dull ache rather than sharp-white throb.

But then the pressure is gone and she can suck in a world-swallowing breath and scramble to her feet. Her first instinct is to run, but she can taste his remorse and his embarrassment. It curdles in her throat. It keeps her rooted in place.

For a moment it’s all she can do to drag in several large breaths, panting, chest heaving. She opens one eye slow, peering at him with a narrowed gaze.

“It’s okay,” she whispers, though she’s not certain it is. She knows that the embarrassment belongs to him and it tastes sour on her tongue. “It’s okay,” she says again and then swallows thick.

“We’re okay,” she adds and then nods before forcing both eyes open.

maybe we were meant to be lonely

A      S      T      R      A