on taking his last name

I found the language for it on an episode of Grey's Anatomy, in August of 2018. Before he proposed but well after I already knew I would marry him. A guttural reaction; What's in a name? To have the last name of a man who loves me. I've never had that. ​Everything.

So I wear it proudly: already emblazoned on a denim jacket; in the margins of my notebook, like a smitten school-girl. Making sense of my history with a resolute finality. As if to say, this is what you needed. It was always meant to be.