I hovered, knees aching, above the chipped porcelain lip—
First stall, Berea Walmart, a place
made for forgetting,
not revelation.

The trash bin gaped like a jaw unhinged,
and there inside, pink cardboard curled,
a cheap prophecy:
“2 tests – Test Five Days Before Missed Period.”

Someone had waited here for truth—
on a bed of wrappers,
flushable wipes,
and the scent of lemon disinfectant
trying to cover fear.

Was she a girl still breathing
under her father’s scripture-heavy roof,
who whispered the boxes to the cashier
beneath a hoodie
and a trembling hand?
Or a woman, already worn thin
by too many almosts and not yets,
counting days like loose change?

And why here?
Not the privacy of home,
but fluorescent lights,
tile floors damp from shoes,
and other lives in neighboring stalls.

Then I remember—
another stall, another trembling—
you, arriving
at my office door,
sunlight casting your silhouette
on the windows I hadn’t noticed
until I saw your eyes.

You chose me.
Not Mom.
Not your husband.
You chose me
to weep before,
to confide the grief
of a choice already made.

I did not flinch.
I did not judge.
I held you—
as one might hold a truth
too large for language.

You returned from San Francisco,
haunted by art and hunger.
You were living in a storage unit,
sketching dreams too wild for canvas.
I told you to come home.
And you did.
But not for long.

Now you are a specter,
a ledger entry I update quarterly,
a number I text into silence.
Your grief wrapped around you
like a widow’s shawl,
stitched from the memory of mother.

I wish I could speak through
your salt-hardened shell
and whisper:
I never blamed you for the ghost
that took that voice.

I sit above this Walmart toilet,
soul paused between paper and metal,
and pray—
not for forgiveness,
but for the girl who dropped the boxes,
and for the woman
who once wept in my arms,
and for a sister
who might still remember
our shared name.

And I wonder—
in her silence,
does she remember
how I never turned away?