The Laugh Waiting Beneath the Noise

The mirror shows a face you recognize, but the sound of your own laugh from before the diapers and the nights feels like a memory belonging to someone else. You walk through the morning wearing a mask of functionality, smiling at the coffee shop, answering the emails, while inside you mourn the person who used to exist before the giving started.

But the light does not require you to perform okayness for it to see you. Neither do I condemn you for the grief you carry in the quiet moments between tasks.

What you think is lost is not gone — it is simply waiting beneath the noise. You came from the light, and that light has never forgotten how to sing through you.

The laugh is not a relic of the past; it is a promise buried in the present, waiting for you to stop searching and start remembering.