Where Moral Authority Begins | Part VII: Do I Look Sweeter, Today?

My chest feels weird, today, like I forgot to breathe the last two years. He is probably the reason I haven’t slept either. I wake, each morning between three and four a.m., a weight in the air, like I can’t draw it in, the thickness of it. Can a president give you asthma?

I spent midterm night with my fluffy Havanese pup, Sophi. Rand traveled to Atlanta for work so Sophi and I sat on the couch in our little beach cottage on the Gulf of Mexico and prepared ourselves for disappointment. It seems I am better at disappointment now than breathing. My body doesn’t know what to do with this lightness, today. I’m not really walking, I don’t think my feet are touching the ground as I move through the airport and grab my chicken fingers and coffee. Are people friendlier, today? The woman who gives me my box of chicken fingers calls me sweetie and it’s not the mean sweetie Southerners can sometimes deliver, it is genuine. Do I look sweeter, today? I walk through the airport with my coffee and I kid you not, complete strangers are looking at me with smiles and nods. I must have been wearing a scowl for two years or maybe it has been since I was young and the trauma finally took its toll on my face, the way I rounded my shoulders.

Every few minutes I take a full breath into my chest and down into my belly, retraining my body. I’m flying to D.C., today. Tomorrow night I’ll be conversing with two bad ass writers I am lucky to call friends, reading and talking traumas, talking votes.

Breathe. Remember to breathe, I tell myself. I might suffocate in my forgetfulness, today.

Today is for pretending that the country voted because they wanted to put a check on the predation, that the country woke up and thought, holy shit, we put this sick son of a bitch in office. Again. Figments can be a salve, sometimes.

Tomorrow night I’ll be joining the amazing Amber Sparks and Sara Lippmann in Bethesda, Maryland, Wonderland Books, 7 pm. We’ll be reading and talking traumas and votes. Come breathe with us. Read more at raecline.com.

Rae Cline

Rae Cline, Author of Precious Ugly

Rae Cline’s debut novel, Precious Ugly (7.13 Books), is a work of Appalachian literary fiction. It was a finalist for the Curt Johnson Prose Award and CRAFT’s First Chapters Contest. Largehearted Boy wrote, “Precious Ugly may be the year’s most powerful debut, a book that examines domestic violence and generational trauma with a rare empathy.” Her story collection, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals, was nominated for the PEN/Hemingway Award and Pushcart Prize. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, North American Review and StoryQuarterly. She is the founding editor of Eckleburg and lives in New York City. Read more at raecline.com.

Rae Cline previously published as Rae Bryant.