Mother figure.The words sat on the page in Melina's neat handwriting, casual as a grocery list.

"Cyprian usually calls her Mommy," the young teacher offered helpfully, still smiling.

Before I could respond, Linda - Cyprian's regular teacher - came rushing over. The panic in her eyes told me she understood exactly how bad this looked. She shot the new teacher a sharp look and steered her away, then turned to me with a strained expression.

"Luna Astraea, I'm so sorry. Please, come in."

I signed my name below Melina's. The ink looked small next to hers.

Inside the classroom, the walls were covered with children's artwork. The theme was "My Family." Bright crayon houses with smiling stick figures and puffy clouds - dozens of them, each one a little world of love drawn by tiny hands.

I found Cyprian's.

A house. Inside it, three people holding hands: a tall man labeled "Daddy," a woman with long hair labeled "Mommy Melina," and a small boy labeled "Me." A big yellow sun sat overhead. Everyone was smiling.

Outside the house, in the bottom right corner, there was one more figure. A stick person standing alone in what looked like rain - a cloud above, blue lines falling down. No name. No label. Just a small, solitary shape getting wet while everyone else stayed warm inside.

Linda appeared beside me. Her voice was gentle, careful, like she was delivering a diagnosis.

"Luna Astraea... we asked him to redraw it. He refused. He said this is his family, and this is what his family looks like." She paused. "The one outside - we didn't ask who that was. We thought it might be better if -"

"It's fine," I said. "I know who it is."

It was me.

In my son's picture of home, I was the one standing outside in the rain. I wasn't "Mommy." I wasn't even worth a name. I was just a faceless shape that didn't belong inside the house where his real family lived.

I stared at that little figure for a long time. The crayon strokes were clumsy, the rain was just wobbly blue lines, and the cloud was a grey smudge. My five-year-old son's drawing struck my heart with thunderous force, effortlessly shattering my composure. It dawned on me that I still had no home, still stood alone, shut out from the world.

I stood there taking several deep breaths, struggling to calm myself down.

I found Cyprian by the craft table, gluing glitter onto something. I knelt down so my eyes were level with his.

"Cyprian. The person standing outside in your picture - who is that?"

He barely glanced at me. "That's you."

"Why am I outside?"

He shrugged, like I'd asked why the sky was blue. "Because you're not fun. You always make me eat vegetables and you won't let me watch TV and you have all these dumb rules." He peeled a glitter strip off his finger and flicked it away.

"Dad always says you suffered serious injuries bringing me into this world, so when you're uncomfortable, you want me to be uncomfortable too? When you're unhappy, you want me to be unhappy as well?"

"Melina says home is supposed to be a happy place. People who aren't happy don't get to come inside."