Two Keys (excerpt)

At thirteen, writing became the only space that felt lockable. I kept a diary with a small silver key and wrote as if the page were a room I could enter alone. The lock was more symbolic than secure. I had one key. My mother had two.

She used to joke about it in front of her friends, laughing that I had one key and she had two. They laughed with her. I understood then that the lock was mostly decorative. Control did not depend on access. It depended on who was allowed to look.

When I discovered she had read the diary, my hands shook. I remember the heat in my face before I remember the words. In one entry I had called her a stupid bitch. She said I was disrespectful. I said she should not read what was not hers.

After that, I never wrote without imagining someone standing behind me—in the driveway, in the car, outside my bedroom door.

The pages stopped being confessions. They became performances.

This is an excerpt from a longer piece currently under submission.