A Quiet Declaration

But she never did.

Because she couldn’t.

So she wrote instead.

Page after page. Fearless, angry, tender, tired.

And every evening on her way home from the café, she passed a boutique window downtown—glass polished, displays pristine. And in the center: this very pen. The same one now in her hands. She’d stopped to admire it more times than she could count. Dreamed of saving enough to buy it on