CARMEN
I’ve been in Jasper for just under two weeks, yet it already feels like I’ve lived here my whole life.
It’s nothing close to the life I was living before—counting days, watching doors, flinching with subtle hand twitches. I measured my survival by silence and mastered being invisible. No, this is something softer. Something warm. Something that feels like it belongs to me.
I feel like me again.
Not the version of me that learned how to shrink, or hide, or brace for impact—but the girl I was before everything went ugly. Before loss hollowed me out, before my husband turned my world dark and unforgiving. Back when my parents were alive, and laughter came easily. When I didn’t have to question every kindness as if it were a trick.
Here, in this little mountain town, I don’t feel l
