A list of words: Prelude to a filing
tangled
entwined
enmeshed
intractable
permanent
permeable
change
slip
push
split
heal
break

*****
Tomorrow at this time, the City will have known for five hours what toad and I have known for nearly a year. We’ve been operating on what we know to be true for a good bit of time, now. Long enough that I think of myself as a single person, most of the time. Long enough that I can see the early growth of what my life alone will be.

But it’s not long enough. I’m not ready. I’m not ready to sign my name on the form, the one that states that what we thought was forever really isn’t, after all. The one that undoes, with a swipe of a pen and the seal of a notary, what we built so carefully, what we protected so fiercely, what we worked to create and maintain and guard against everything that was set against it.

And, you know, the odds were not in our favor. Maybe it’s like this for everyone, maybe it’s like this for lesbians, maybe it’s applicable just to toad and me.

We had to work so fucking hard to bring our family into existence. It seems like a slap in the face that all it takes to eradicate it is a letter-size piece of paper that’s only printed on one side.