I changed out of the black dress.
I sat at my kitchen table with a cup of tea.
I thought about the hallway.
The specific temperature of it.
The calculation of the safest path.
The twenty years between then and now.
The two hundred and forty members.
The people
who had found their way to a room where someone would see them clearly.
I had built that room because of the hallway.
I had built it because I knew what it was to not be seen.
Because I knew what it cost.
Because I had gotten out and I had found my way into my body and I had wanted to make a place where other people could do the same.
And I had.
And they came.
And they kept coming.
And none of that would have happened if the hallway had not been what it was.
This is not the same as being grateful for the hallway.
