The Muscle Memory of Fear

The Poem

The room is safe, but the skin remembers.

The sun spills over the clean white sheets,

Jon’s arm is a warm, unmoving boundary across my waist,

a mountain of peace sleeping in the daylight.

But a car door slams three floors down on the street.

A sharp, metallic thud.

And my lungs collapse before my eyes can open.

The adrenaline is an old friend, rushing the gates,

telling me to hide, telling me to check the weather.

I am miles away from the Blacktown hallway,

the AVO is signed, the plaster is off my wrist,

but the body doesn’t read the legal papers.

The bruises of the mouth stay green under the surface.

Jon stirs, his dark eyes opening slow,

watching the frantic rise and fall of my collarbone.

He doesn’t reach to fix it;

he just drops his hand flat on the mattress,

waiting for me to understand

the air in this room isn’t a trap.

The Story

The flat in Cronulla was entirely devoid of ghosts, yet Kara woke up prepared for a haunting.

It was a Tuesday morning, the coastal light filtering through the sheer curtains in long, soft ribbons of cream and gold. Beside her, Jon was deeply asleep, his massive chest rising and falling with a slow, predictable rhythm that had become her favourite sound in the world. His heavy arm was draped loosely over her hip, not pinning her down, but resting there like an unbothered anchor.

Then, three floors down on the street below, a delivery van backfired, followed immediately by the sharp, echoing slam of a metal door.

Kara’s body reacted before her conscious mind could stop it. Her shoulders bunched toward her ears, her knees pulled inward, and her chest locked tight, refusing to let her draw oxygen. The muscle memory of her time with Christian took total control. In that fractured second, she wasn’t in a safe coastal flat; she was back on the linoleum floor, waiting for the volume to rise, waiting to see if the jaw line across from her was shifting into stone.

Her heart hammered against her ribs—a chaotic, frantic rhythm that felt entirely too loud in the quiet bedroom. She lay frozen, her blue eyes wide, staring at the ceiling until the phantom smoke of the old life cleared.

Jon stirred beside her. The sudden shift in her breathing had woken him, but he didn’t jump up or make a loud, sudden movement that would add to the noise in her head. He slowly opened his dark eyes, his expression shifting from sleep into that familiar, deeply observant concern.

He looked at her rigid posture. He looked at the way her left hand was gripping the edge of the sheet until her knuckles turned white. He didn’t reach out to touch her cheek, and he didn’t crowd her perimeter. He knew that when the panic was loud, even a loving hand could feel like a cage.

Instead, Jon simply lifted his heavy arm off her hip and placed his palm flat on the mattress between them, giving her a visible, steady object to look at.

“I’m right here, Kara,” he whispered, his baritone voice low and rough with sleep, a stabilising force against the static. “You’re in Cronulla. The door is locked from the inside. Just breathe.”

Kara took a shuddering, hesitant breath, her throat burning slightly as the oxygen returned. She looked at his massive hand on the sheet. It was a slow, agonising process—this unlearning of the danger. The physical fractures Christian had caused were completely healed, but the words he had spat at her—the constant accusations, the whispers that she was worthless without him—remained rooted in her thoughts like damp rot.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, her voice thick with a sudden, frustrating wave of shame. “I know I’m safe. I just... my body doesn’t listen to me sometimes.”

“Don’t apologise for surviving, mate,” Jon said softly, his thumb tracking a small circle against the fabric of the sheet, still keeping his distance until she invited him closer. “You spent a year training your heart to brace for impact. It’s going to take longer than a few weeks to tell it that the war is over. We’re on a long track, Kara. I’m not expecting a sprint.”

His patience was a direct challenge to the unhealthy conditioning she had inherited from both her mother and Christian. She was used to being penalised for her weakness; she was used to offering instant, frantic submission to keep a man from turning cold. But Jon wasn’t demanding a performance. He was simply leaving the door open, letting her stumble through the recovery at her own pace. Kara slowly slid her hand across the gap between them, lacing her fingers through his, letting his steady pulse slowly override the alarm ringing in her chest.