But I hadn’t always been this ghost.

There was a time, thirty years ago, when I filled rooms with my presence. When professors at Howard University sought my perspective on urban policy. When my senior thesis on generational wealth accumulation in Black communities was recommended for publication. There was a time when a different man had looked at me and seen not an accessory to be positioned, but a partner whose mind matched his own in ambition and fire.

I touched the silver locket at my throat without thinking. My fingers found the small, familiar clasp I had opened ten thousand times. Inside was a photograph, so worn the features were fading into white noise. But I didn’t need the photo to see his face.

So you remember, he had said, fastening it around my neck the summer after graduation, his hands trembling with the weight of our impending separation. So you never forget that someone saw you exactly as you are, and loved every bit of it.

I had never taken it off. Not when Kenneth gave me a diamond choker to replace it. Not when he sneered that silver was “cheap.” It was the only piece of territory I still held.