Love in the Pouring of Milk

The cereal bowls are on the counter. The milk is out.

You pour it with a hand that does not shake, smiling at the small voices asking for more, acting as if the ground did not open up beneath you an hour ago. This is the middle of the day — the long, quiet stretch where you carry the weight of what happened while everyone else expects you to be fine.

You are performing okayness so well that even you almost believe it. But the light sees the mask.

It sees the trembling underneath the calm. It knows you are holding two worlds at once: the broken one inside and the whole one you are showing them.

You do not have to drop the mask right now to be held. The light is right here in the kitchen, in the pouring, in the silence between bites.

It is not waiting for you to fall apart. It is walking with you through the performance.

The strength it takes to make breakfast when your heart is in pieces — that is not hypocrisy. That is love.

And love is where the light lives.