It was in the narrow hour before evening,
when the kitchen light became honey
upon the cups,
and the window held the last blue breath of day,
that The Woman spoke to me.
Soon she would walk
onto the Trail of the Spirits,
where the old ones say
the dead travel in their bright silence
through the long white dust of stars.
But then she was still here:
her shawl smelling faintly of cedar,
her hands thin as winter branches,
her eyes carrying that strange tenderness
of those already half in another world.
She called me Son-of-my-heart,
and motioned me nearer,
as though wisdom were a small fire
that could only be shared close enough
to feel its warmth.
She said:
We spend our years
standing in the smoke of our own stories,
naming ourselves hero,
or villain,
or the one wronged beyond repair.
But life does not honor such names.
Life is a rough dealer.
It shuffles in darkness.
It gives without asking.
It takes without apology.
It lays the cards down
and waits.
In one story,
you carried someone from the flood.
In another,
you were the flood.
In another still,
you stood on the bank
and did nothing.
Do not fear this.
This is the price of being human.
Then she grew quiet,
and I could hear the kettle sighing,
the boards settling in the old house,
a dog barking far away
at some invisible sorrow.
I thought of the rooms I came from:
the slammed doors,
the sharp mouths,
the bottle passed hand to hand
like an heirloom of poison,
the child learning early
how to wear laughter
as armor.
I thought of the years
I used pain as a forged coin,
spending it everywhere.
I bluffed with tenderness.
I cheated with tears.
I hid behind my wounds
as gamblers hide aces
inside their sleeves.
And when I won,
I called it justice.
The Woman looked at me then
with no anger in her face,
which was worse and kinder
than anger.
No, Son-of-my-heart, she said.
Not justice.
Only hunger wearing another coat.
Then she touched my chest lightly,
as if knocking
on a locked door.
Growing up is this:
to open.
To say:
Yes, I was loved some days.
Yes, I was broken many days.
Yes, I have broken others.
To say it
without kneeling before shame,
without building a throne from excuses.
To say it plainly,
as one names the weather.
Soon after,
she went to the stars.
The cup she drank from cooled beside the sink.
Her chair kept the shape of her body
for a little while.
The house, even the spoons,
seemed to know.
And I, already old in years
and newborn in spirit,
sat alone at the table.
I looked at the hand I had been dealt:
the dead queens of grief,
the low cards of childhood,
the black king of anger,
the ace of mercy
I had never noticed before.
I gathered them all
without complaint.
Humility, I learned then,
is not bowing.
It is taking the cards in both hands,
even the ugly ones,
and thanking life
for letting you play at all.
So now I sit where I am seated.
I do not spit at fortune.
I do not ask for another deck.
I do not call myself hero
because dawn came.
I do not call myself villain
because night did.
I play what is before me
with steadier hands.
And sometimes,
when the room is quiet
and the window fills with stars,
I feel her near me still,
watching without judgment,
while I lay my cards down honestly
one by one by one.
