The Straightest Thing in the House

By Rachael

There is a piece of paper in the back of a drawer in my house, behind the passports and the warranty for a stove I no longer own, and it is the only document I have ever been issued that certifies a feeling. It names two people and a county and a date, and it carries a seal pressed into it by a machine built for pressing seals, and I remember the line we stood in to ask for it, a good line, patient, everyone holding their forms, and I remember that no one in that line, not one of us, seemed to find it strange that we were asking, that we had come to the innermost thing in our lives by way of a counter with a bell on it and a small fee. And I have been thinking lately, as certain offices grow busy again, with the question of who may do what with whom and under which arrangements, about how that paper got into my drawer and what it is a license to and why I have kept it flat all these years, as though creasing it would crease something else.