The hall had folding chairs and a flag on a stand. Rain drummed on the roof like a thousand tiny hammers.
Mia stood at the front with her hand over her heart. Her voice shook only a little on the last line.
After, she found me in the crowd. "You were the first to believe in me," she said. She meant the driving lessons—four afternoons in my dented Civic, her hands white-knuckled on the wheel.
I thought of the paperback on my windowsill, warped from a leak I keep meaning to patch. I'd been reading the same chapter for weeks.
I've spent forty years staring into mouths, asking people to open wider. No one sees that work. But Mia saw something in me when no one else did.
Maybe the oath isn't the only thing that makes someone belong. Maybe showing up, quietly, is its own kind of citizenship.