The Cracked Earth.
The earth has taken a decent lot from me. My mother. My son. My brother. Three people. Three graves. Three reasons I sometimes wonder how I’m still breathing. There’s a kind of silence that falls after loss and it's not the peaceful kind. The kind that howls under your skin. The kind that makes laughter sound like betrayal. The kind that turns everyday moments - washing dishes, folding laundry - into acts of defiance, because how dare life keep going? But it does. It always does. One of the most gutting graves that I've had to stand over was my mother’s. I remember that day not for the ceremony, but for the absurdity of it all. How people kept saying “She’s in a better place” while I was standing there wondering where the hell that place is , and why she wasn’t still here, cooking, singing on the fly, lecturing me with love, being our lighthouse. They lowered her in, and I swear the sky dimmed. Like even the sun understood that something holy had been taken. Grief...
