I wanted to hang my laundry and drink my coffee and grow old with my husband and have my back be my own private business.

So I hid it.

I moved away, Robert and I, to somewhere nobody knew, and I put it in the dark, and I kept it there.” She was quiet a moment.

“That was my mistake, I think.

I was so busy refusing to be their monument that I let the fire take something it hadn’t managed to take on the day itself.

It scarred my back in about ten seconds.