E.P. Rains

Mrs. belongs to my mother
The title never fit on me

It hung loose like a baggy sweater, secondhand
My husband tried it out for a while
Rolling it on his tongue the day he dropped to his knee

I twirled it around my finger for a few months
Mr. and Mrs. written on our Christmas cards
Publicly bound in holy namesake

But my name binds me to my family
The name that my friends yell across a room
The letters scrawled on my diploma that signify me

My name is my name
His name is his
My husband, his wife

We don’t need to share consonants and vowels
Then I settled on Ms.