You already know how tonight goes.
It's 9:40. She finally went down. The dishwasher is running.
And you're at the kitchen table with a black Sharpie and a pile of plastic.
Because the ink beads up on silicone and slides right off.
Write her name eleven times. Your handwriting gets worse every time.
Three weeks later, you're doing it again.
Because the name on the bottle came out of the sink as a gray smudge. The tape on the lunch box curled at the corner and collected crumbs. And the cardigan — the one your mother picked out before she was even born — never came home.
Nobody stole it. Nobody was careless.
A teacher with fourteen kids and a bin of gray sweaters had no way to know which one was hers.