The flame of the kerosene lamp flickered away into black, forcing me to retire my paper and pen, and search for rest that I knew would not come. The August air was suffocatingly thick, even within the walls of our cabin. Droplets of moisture in the air had settled in my neatly made bed, dampening my sheets as I climbed into them for the last time and laid my head down on my pillow. There was a low tone that traveled across the wooden floor, like water flowing from an overturned cup. A slightly higher tone followed it. I knew it was the voices of my mother and father in the room next to me, The same familiar late-night voices, through the same smooth wood walls, in the home where I took my first breath 16 years ago.

But this night felt different than the others. The sense of comfort and curiosity those low tones had always given me, now felt like the damp air that covered my bed. Heavy and uncomfortable.

I closed my eyes and envisioned what they might look like. Curled onto their sides, facing one another in the black night, softening their conversation as much as one could without even a splinter of light to illuminate lips that could be read. Maybe tears falling, mixing with humid sheets, whispering the things that could only be whispered. The things that they never would want to say any louder than they must. The things about me, what I had done, and where I was going.

Part of me wondered, as I listened to their indistinguishable, almost undetectable sounds, if maybe there was still a possibility I could stay. But I knew we had explored every option and all that was left was embracing the trajectory of my life if I did not go. I had stayed as long as I was able, and now it was time to face myself. I placed a hand on my abdomen, it was still mostly flat when I laid on my back. My hand travel to my hip bones, to my ribs, feeling the firm skin that would stretch beyond what seemed possible. I took in a full breath very slowly through my nose. I exhaled even slower through my mouth. Again and again I focused on the only thing that truly felt mine anymore-my breath.

Everything else seemed to belong to someone else. My present, stolen and possessed by every judging eye, that would never be given the opportunity to see my belly grow. My naivety belonged to this child in my womb, forcing me to become a woman who makes grown-up decisions and bears children. My future belonged to the women that would take me in with a scarlet letter around my neck, and send me off lily white to attend university. My dignity belonged to my mother and daddy, as the caretakers of the secret. And my heart…my happiness…my body… belonged to him.

How would I ever continue exercising the only autonomy I had left if I could not be with him? How would I breathe knowing that when he wakes up in the morning I will be but a vapor… vanishing like the fog at sunset. So now that I think about it, I guess my breath belongs to him too. And I’m left with nothing, my fate is sealed.