I. Her Hands
The window lets in a tired kind of sheen,
like the illumination inside a church
after everyone’s gone home
and the grit is still floating,
pretending it belongs.
She kneels behind her daughter
and begins the old work
parting strands that smell of soap
and sleep and something else
she can’t name,
only remember.
Her fingers know the route.
Not from love. From repetition.
From the quiet survival
of morning after morning
when no one said thank you,
but the knots had to come out anyway.
II. The Tree
The tree outside should have been cut down years ago.
It leans too far to trust.
But still it grows,
drags its shadow in circles,
scratches the siding when the wind forgets itself.
Its bark splits where water froze,
healed badly,
healed anyway.
Children used to swing from the low branch.
She remembers one falling
not the sound of the fall,
but the silence after.
The way the air waited,
the way everything seemed to pause
as if asking,
is this the moment that changes everything?
It wasn’t.
But something still cracked.
III. The Water
In the yard, a sparrow finds the bowl again.
Rainwater, old leaves, a film of grease
from the last time someone barbecued.
Still, the bird dives like it believes
this water can make it new.
It flails in circles – tiny chaos,
beating its wings like it’s late
for something no one invited it to.
The girl turns to look.
The woman does not.
She’s seen joy that frantic before.
It always costs something.
IV. The Boy
On the steps,
the boy with the knife.
He has no business carving beauty
with hands that have only known
how to hold things too tight or drop them.
Still – he hollows the reed
with careful, brutal slowness.
Each curl of the blade
is a exhale he didn’t know he’d been holding.
He presses his mouth to the opening.
The note that comes
is almost nothing
like the cry of a thing still forming lungs.
But it stays.
Wobbles. Waits.
Takes shape like steam
against a winter window:
brief. True. Gone.
V. What They Carry
The girl carries a bruise shaped like an accident.
She says it came from the corner of the dresser.
No one asks again.
The woman carries the sound
her own mother made
when she dropped a plate once,
not from clumsiness,
but from the freight of being expected
to hold everything.
The boy carries a drawing in his pocket
he won’t show anyone
a face he doesn’t know how to explain,
except to say, it’s someone I miss,
even though I never met them.
VI. The Note
The sparrow is gone.
The bowl tipped, water spilled.
The wind stirs what’s left
into a shape almost like a hand
reaching out,
then forgetting why.
She finishes the braid.
It’s not perfect.
But it holds.
She presses her palm
to the crown of the girl’s head
like she’s stamping something permanent
into a thing too easily erased.
The boy plays again.
And this time,
the note does not shake.
It rises.
Not like hope.
Not like prayer.
Like something primordial and undeserved
escaping the throat of the world.
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