Her Name Is on the Page Now

I published something tonight. It went up around nine-fifteen and I closed the laptop almost immediately, which is new for me. Usually I refresh. Usually I watch the counter like that's going to tell me something. Tonight I just, closed it.

This was the fourth draft. I don't mean fourth as in I revised it four times. I mean I wrote it completely from scratch four separate times, and three of those times I saved the file under a name I kept changing because I couldn't decide if the document was brave or embarrassing. Tonight I renamed it one more time. I named it after her. And then I published it.

My mother's name is Claire. That's the first time I've written that here. I don't know what I expected, some kind of shift in the air, the apartment to feel different. It doesn't. The lamp is still on. The blanket is still on the floor where I kicked it. The post is just there now, sitting on the internet the way Tuesday sits in the week: without ceremony, before Wednesday.

the laptop still open, the thing already sent

I've been carrying this draft around since spring and for a while I thought the reason I couldn't post it was craft, wrong tone, wrong structure, wrong word in the third paragraph. But that wasn't it. The last time I opened the private document, I realized I already had it. I had it in draft two. I just wasn't ready to let anyone see her name yet. Tonight I was. I don't have a big explanation for why tonight specifically. It was just Tuesday. The laptop was already open.