The letter first, because it was the smallest and I wanted to know whether I could do it at all. I could. It went up fast, the way paper does, and left a smell in the kitchen for two days.
The marriage certificate took longer. It was heavier paper, the kind that resists. I had to hold a corner of it down with the poker.
The coat was a mistake. Wool smoulders. I sat on the step at midnight and watched it refuse to burn for an hour, which is a long time to sit with a decision.
After that I stopped making lists. Not because I had finished, but because I had noticed something about the order I had chosen — smallest to largest, easiest to hardest — and I did not want to know what was next.