At Mother’s Day Dinner My Family Made A Decision For Me And The Next Morning Everything Changed

of a neighbor’s camera, in lipstick across a windshield. Others believe the line means nothing at all unless someone finally refuses to move it.

I had been moving it for thirty-seven years.

That night in the hallway, with a store-bought pie in my hands and my mother’s footsteps fading on the stairs, I put it down.

I did not pick it up again.