I did not display the wedding photographs.
There had never been a wedding.
On the anniversary of that day, I found the old hat in a storage box.
For a moment, I remembered my father telling me to wear it so no one would have to look at what they had done.
I carried it outside and placed it beside the garden tools for anyone who needed shade from the sun.
My hair had begun to reach my shoulders again.
But its length no longer mattered.
What mattered was that no one in my family could touch it, my home, my name or my future and call the taking an act of love.
My grandmother had been right.
Peace was not powerlessness.
Sometimes peace was standing in the center of an aisle, opening the folder everyone had ordered you to ignore and finally reading your own name on the deed.
