EMMA
I don’t go back to sleep.
I sit on the cold tile floor until the sky outside the motel window turns from bruised purple to washed-out gray. Every few minutes, that invisible cord inside my chest tugs, sharp and insistent, like a warning I’m refusing to read.
Something is wrong.
I know it with a certainty that makes my teeth chatter.
I try logic first. I always do.
Dreams don’t mean anything. Stress creates hallucinations. Trauma wires your body to anticipate danger even when none exists. I read that once. Probably more than once. I cling to it like a life raft.
But logic doesn’t explain why my hands smell like pine when I rub them together.
Logic doesn’t explain the ache in my bones, deep and restless, like I need to move or I’ll crawl out of my own skin.
Logic definitely doe
