No one notices
when the day begins inside her.
Before the kettle remembers its song,
before the window quite let in morning,
she is already gathering scattered hours
into something the family can live inside.
She carries invisible things –
an appointment no one else will
remember,
a sweater already folded once into a
schoolbag,
rain waiting somewhere without warning.
She makes an apology
for arguments she did not begin,
simply because peace
has learned her name too well.
There are afternoons
when silence follows her
from room to room,
not like loneliness exactly,
but like another task
she has not finished.
She wonders, briefly,
who she was
before every thought
began with someone else tomorrow.
Then a laugh cuts through the house –
too loud, to alive to ignore.
A voice calls, Mum.
Just that.
And something in her shifts –
not fixed, but pulled back together
in a way she cannot explain.
She does not mistake love for ease.
She knows it is built
the way rivers worry stone:
slowly, without witness,
until every hardness begins to change shape.
