lead lines. — a reflection
I don’t remember the words, but I do remember the feeling.
A seventeen-year-old me sitting in the front passenger seat of a dark green Honda Accord in 2004 where it was parked in a farther-away spot than normal. The hallways of the Christian kindergarten-through-twelfth-grade school would soon begin to fill, but for now, I put my feet onto the surface of the glovebox where they didn’t belong and listened.
Emotion gurgled inside of her throat as she scrambled to keep the pieces where they belonged. Tears in her words, she continued the dissertation on the importance of conformity, the longest piece of grass being mowed first, and the question of a boy wearing eyeliner.
It was a question whose specific words didn’t matter. The impression lingered. God’s clear rules, the family name, an incorrect reflection.
I would revisit the moment a thousand times as the years went by and I added pronouns to who I was and unearthed colors that had been muddied by dirty stained glass windows.
Photo by Naira Babayan on Unsplash[image error]
