Quiet Strength

I looked at the name on the phone.

Calla. Quiet strength.

Twenty-five years of not knowing that was what I was carrying. Of fourteen placements and practiced exits and not being entirely sure I was allowed to take up the space I was in. Of building things quietly and letting them speak. All of it in a name I'd been given before I could speak at all, by a woman who had died before I was born, throu