The Weight of Staying
When the document opened, the screen's pale glow painted her face stark and unreal.
There it was, the whole thing rendered in a more official font—serifs sharp, lines crisp, a bureaucratic gravitas that made everything twelve times more real and about a thousand times more intimidating. Her name stared back at her, dignified and fragile all at once, as if the universe itself had issued a certificate of possibility.
Dear Ms. Leighton, the line so formal it seemed to stand at attention, a velvet rope between her and a future she’d only allowed herself to imagine at three in the morning.