Mornings with coffee and no dread. Work that is mine. Money that answers only to me. Friends who do not ask me to shrink so they can feel large. Evenings in a city chosen rather than inherited. A body that no longer tightens at the sound of my phone. Seasons measured by weather instead of crisis. A balcony rose opening in June. Betty’s pearls catching light on the dresser. A name that belongs to me without family commentary attached.
Sometimes new people ask if I have siblings.
I say no.
It is not biologically true. It is emotionally precise.
I have thought about changing my last name. Maybe someday I will. Not from fear, not from shame, but because names are doors too, and I have become interested in building only the ones I wish to walk through. For now I keep Miller on my papers as a private joke. The people who thought it guaranteed access to me are the same people I shut out under it.
On the second anniversary of that night, I received a letter forwarded through Margaret Higgins’s office. No return address beyond a federal correctional institution in Oregon.
Brett.