Mothers know. Even when sons become oceans of silence they know. There are nights when my chest feels too small for all this grief when love leaves claw marks inside the ribs when the world feels cruel and people become strangers overnight. And still from the kitchen light, from the soft sound of utensils from the way she asks “Did you eat?” as if hunger is the only sadness she can fight she keeps me alive.
I have watched her carry storms without ever calling them storms. Watched her fold pain into routine: washing clothes, answering calls, remembering medicines, feeding everyone before herself. A woman built from sacrifice so ordinary that nobody even notices it anymore.
Sometimes I think my mother and God speak in the same language: both stay invisible while holding everything together. I wish I could tell her that I notice. That beneath my ruined sleep and distracted replies I still see the cracks in her hands the tiredness beneath her smile the way life kept taking from her and she kept giving anyway.
And if one day I become someone gentle someone capable of loving deeply without turning cruel it will be because I was raised by a woman who taught love without ever making a speech about it.
