She held the damp cloth, cold in her fist.
She didn't stop. Her arm ached, but the ache was a prayer. Each stroke was a small death: the lover who'd handled her like a half-read book, the debt that whispered her name in the dark, the quiet agreement to shrink herself so others could feel tall. clean slate by mugwump
Her hand hovered. Then, lightly, not even a word, just a shape—a single, small circle. A sun. A zero. A beginning. She held the damp cloth, cold in her fist
And in that void, a single, fragile power: the choice of what to draw first. Each stroke was a small death: the lover
The chalkboard of the year stood before her, not erased, but smeared—a ghost-trail of Januaries and Septembers, of promises half-drawn and resolutions half-scrubbed. Each gray smudge was a word she'd choked on, a plan she'd abandoned by February, a version of herself she'd tried to dust away but couldn't quite.
