Hazels Journey

by Rebecca Ann Woodberry Miller

There was a tired girl on the way back to the car fort.

All day the older women had yelled at her, do this, do that, and you did that wrong.

She’d spent all day imagining hanging her car forts curtains. She had thought about library books that were 3 months overdue, and how she couldn’t pay the fine yet.

She added yet another favorite beverage to the imaginary shopping list, sure that citrus tea would be there after her shift.

She drifted into her interior design ideas when her coworker yelled at her. Hazel had mentally hung dreamcatchers and snapshots of the California coast all day.

But now, she would actually do it. As she walked to the parking lot, a toolbox in hand she breathed all her knowing out

And all her knowing looked like that. just a couple breaths, transparent. No one could quite find the words for it.