She Sent Her Mother One Cent Until Police Found Her Name

was beside it, the tassel bent, glitter flaking onto the laminate.

I looked at those things for a long time.

I looked at the diploma in the grocery bag and I thought about the print shop mornings and the snack cooler and the four hours of sleep and the ink under my fingernails and the stage I had walked across alone, and I thought about the years before continue reading …