Vachon Imagined

I don’t know, and neither do you, she said.

And in the space between their words,
he tried to enter the room like certainty—
like force disguised as meaning,
like a demand for her to confirm his shape.

But she would not.

No, I will not say what you want me to say
just to keep your emptiness structured,
just to make your hollow feel like architecture.

No.

And the room trembled at the refusal.

They called it something else after that—
as they always do when language fails them,
when a woman will not become a mirror.

There were consequences for not reading the script,
for not holding the nail still in your own palm
so someone else could believe in their design of you.

But she did not agree to the story.

Not even when they tried to rename it.

Because something in her had already crossed
a threshold they could not access—
not death, not absence,
but a kind of refusal so complete
it cannot be reached by threat.

And from that place—
not gone, not erased, not owned—
she remained.

Not because of him.

Never because of him.

But because something in her
kept singing anyway,
deep in the part of existence
that does not ask permission to continue.

Glory, if you need the word—
but not as they define it.

Glory as continuity.
Glory as refusal.
Glory as the fact of her still becoming
herself.