March?
Panic replaced the anxiety that grew within me. My chest felt too tight. My skin was too taut and thin. Breathing harder and faster, I was helpless to how my body physically and viscerally reacted to the threat he’d mentioned.
March?
No.
That’s too soon.
Any month would be too soon because despite all the years of being trapped like a bird with clipped wings, a tiny thread of the woman I once was still survived deep down.
Ineverwanted my marriage to come.
It would always be too soon, too close, too horrible of a nightmare to come true.
I hadn’t had a chance to live.
To be myself.
To breathe the fresh air and explore without any constraints.
I wanted the freedom to move. To read. To speak my mind. To justbe!
Without any more sounds from the other room, it seemed Erik had hung up. I’d heard enough for now, anyway. Suspended in terror and this stupidly stubborn refusal to accept that my life would be over in two months, I backed away from the wall.
Numb and weak, I staggered back toward the window.
Sucking in shallow breaths as my vision blurred, I felt so defenseless to the panic attack that was creeping over me.
Once my back hit the opposite wall, I sank down a bit. Too sluggish to stand straight, I leaned to the side.
The sliver of gray brightness beckoned me to focus out there. Through the window.
Yusef often beat me for staring out the windows, claiming I was letting my mind wander to places it shouldn’t. That I needed to concentrate on the present, on the man I would be given to so I could be his slave and whore to breed.
Nothing outside the window could matter to me, according to Yusef.
Yet, it was the one habit I couldn’t break.
Drawn to be a spectator of the real work out there, I couldn’t stop this compulsion to get a glimpse of the normal people out there.
It wasn’t only the open, dull sky that lured me to stare mindlessly this time. It wasn’t just the need to imagine such freedom and openness, the bite of fresh air to make me feel alive and not trapped.
But the bird’s eye.
The female pigeon had hopped closer. Standing on the edge of the windowsill, with her mate ever-present like the loving partner he was behind her, she ducked. Back and forth, she jerkily lowered her head to peer at me.
She blinked, then cocked her head to the side.
Something about her gaze locking on me jarred me from the panic.
Then she tapped her beak. It rapped against the windowpane.
Once, twice.
She stared again, as if beseeching me toseeher.
As if summoning me to watch her. To heed her will.
