Occasionally, I’ll share excerpts of the project that has been getting my attention, aka Work In Progress. All writing is my own and in the rough draft phase. Take it for what it is! 

****

In this moment, I’m keenly aware of how the turn of phrase “Hit you like a ton of bricks” came about; my power to form words is still, inescapably forfeit. Instead, I hear him exhale a plume of smoke from the menthol cigarette I know he buys, outside of the bar I know he works at on Sunday evenings. In my mind’s eye, I can see how his feet are placed, how he’s holding that cigarette, his phone and the set of his shoulders that I know all too well. It was his broad shoulders that once set my heart aflutter. It was with my head inside those shoulders, my body swaddled in his arms, his fingers massaging where my neck meets my skull and his damp breath on my neck that once held me and calmed me through the harrowing experience of being a teenager.

“This might be the first time I’ve ever made you speechless.”

“Yeah,” I found the word. Just the one. But it was all he needed to plunge into a soliloquy.

“We went and got a test. It was positive. . .”