The argument had ended ten minutes ago, but her hands still trembled.
She stood alone in the kitchen, fingers clenched around the rim of the sink, water dripping in a slow, irregular rhythm. Her breath came in short, shallow bursts. The echo of raised voices still rang in her ears – his words, hers, colliding like fists in a narrow hallway.
Her jaw was tight. Her chest buzzed with tension. She reached instinctively for her phone, then stopped. Not this time.
Instead, she pressed both palms flat against the cool surface of the counter. Her feet found the tile beneath her. Solid. Steady. The hum in her chest didn't vanish, but she could feel its edges. For once, she wasn't running from the discomfort. She was watching it.
There, beneath the anger she felt something softer. A sting behind her eyes. A hollow in her ribs. Her shoulders dropped half an inch as she exhaled.
She didn’t try to label it. Not yet. She just watched. Heat in her face. Pulse in her neck. Muscles coiled, ready to defend. But nothing to fight now. No more words to throw.
She took another breath. Deeper this time. Then a question surfaced—not loud, but steady: What would help right now?
She grabbed a glass of water and stood by the window, not sipping yet, just holding it. Across the street, the neighbor’s dog lay on the porch in a puddle of sun. She watched it slowly breathing with sleepy eyes. The breeze in the leaves. Her own heartbeat began to follow their rhythm.
The wave wasn’t gone, but it had softened. She could feel it without drowning in it.
She let herself sit down. In the quiet, her mind began its usual scramble of replays, rewrites, what she should’ve said, what he didn’t understand. But she didn’t chase those thoughts this time. Instead, she pictured them as clouds drifting across a pale sky. One after another, they came. Each one she named silently: “blame,” “shame,” “regret.” Then she let them go. Just watching.
She hadn’t felt this before. She felt steady and in control. Not the kind of control that forces stillness or silences emotion, but the kind that listens without losing itself. She didn’t need to fight what she was feeling. She didn’t need to bury it. She could feel the storm and still choose what came next.
Her fingers unclenched. She rose, walked to the other room, and picked up the sweater still crumpled from last night. Folded it slowly. Then another. Breath by breath, she moved through the clutter, inside and out. Each motion quieted something in her body.
Later, she would talk again. Not to win, but to be real and to understand. To explain what the anger had hidden. Curious about how he felt and why. She would choose different words. A different tone. A different outcome.
But for now, she welcomed the stillness. She stood by the window once more, this time with her hand on her chest. The storm had passed through her without sinking her. She was still standing, firmly on the ground.
