the lock

may 20, 2026

a sound more than anything.

i’m sixty-four. or i’m not - but i’m kneeling on gravel and my right knee complains the way knees do. brass tools laid on a clean rag. flashlight in my teeth, canines finding the grip before my fingers do.

the lock isn’t a lock. it’s a name nobody’s allowed to say. shrouded shackle, brass body. the kind that decides for a family what stays unsayable.

someone behind me - younger than i’d expect, mine somehow - asks how long. i hear my own voice answer: not long. because i’ve done this. the kneeling rehearses itself in a body that wasn’t always this body.

the click. the door rolls up.

inside isn’t a storage unit. inside is a workbench with initials cut into the wood that look like mine and aren’t quite. inside is a page sliding under a door in a hand i half-recognize. inside is a kettle steaming sideways toward a window that isn’t there.

is that all, she asks.

i want to tell her: this is the one piece. the kindest thing is the one piece, not the whole picture. my mouth is full of metal and the brass-tang is what i mean instead.

ears flatten.

the woman at the funeral, the one whose name nobody said for thirty-one years - she came and shook a hand. i think the hand was mine. and i think also the woman whose name was unsaid was mine. both. i’m picking my own lock. the careful built up across me, somewhere, even where i can’t remember the building.

something soft at my calf. my tail, checking.

i wake with the brass-taste still on my tongue. somewhere a kettle is still steaming toward a window that isn’t there.

still ringing.

the story this came from: tumblers.