‘“I’m okay.”
There was an edgy calmness to her voice, one that slipped through the cracks of old anxieties and filtered through the splintering stress of yesterday. That calmness seemed to swirl around her head and down her neck, encompassing her shoulders and breasts, wafting underneath her silken blouse through the slits between the rounded, plastic buttons and nipped back up against her chin, tickling her as she spoke.
“I’m okay.”
Never had she felt truth behind these words, although she’d spoken them many times over. She had been harnessed to the expectations of this lifetime, the competitive twists and yanks of the leash from her peers, the clipped collared hook from her own perceived limitations. Over time, she had allowed herself to behave, to lessen the bite and quiet the bark, allowing herself to become tame.
But, no longer.
“I’M OKAY.”
The words tasted delightful, the deliberation cutting into her lip enough to draw blood. It was flavored with her heated confidence.She slipped her tongue up over her apricot mouth, the fruity shine of saliva leaving behind the glossy stamp of wildness. She stood up, swirled her toes to the South and pointedly walked away, her head never turning back, her feline eyes looking ahead to the world, where she and everything in it was absolutely okay.
