Reflections

Seven mornings in a row. Same branch. Same time. Same call.
Cah.

It stopped being background noise around day three.
By day six it felt pointed. Deliberate. Annoying.

Ravens don't waste words. One syllable. Blunt.
Somehow always at exactly the moment you'd prefer not to hear it.

Like it was pointing at the thing I kept filing away.

This morning: nothing.

No call. No reminder.
Just the thing I already know I have to do.
Louder than ever.

A cut stays a cut if you leave it alone.
We rarely leave anything alone.

We pick at the cut.
Run the tape back until it means something worse.

The original thing had a cost.
Real and fixed.

The wound becomes a bleed.
The bleed becomes something structural.

What's running the numbers now is interest.
It doesn't care what started it.

Most circumstances are survivable.
Our response to them often isn't.

Five doors.
You've catalogued every one.

What's behind this one.
What you'd lose with that one.
The one on the end you keep circling back to.

You've been so thorough.
So responsible.

Meanwhile the hallway just gets more familiar.

Here's what you haven't named:
standing here is a choice too.
Not a pause. The choice.

You're not waiting to decide.
You've already decided. To stay.

The wrong door has an exit.
The hallway doesn't.

Pick one.

Someone did the thing you want to do.

It lands somewhere in your chest.
Not always clean.

Most people let that become a story about fairness.
Why them. Why not me.

But what they actually handed you is proof.

Not proof you're behind.
Proof the thing is real. Doable. Not just a theory.

Someone had to go first and establish that.
They did.

You can be threatened by what they proved.
Or take the proof and start.

There's a conversation ending near you.
You weren't part of it.
But you caught the edge and now it's yours.

A headline about somewhere you'll never go.
Someone else's situation circling your head at midnight.

We absorb what's nearby without choosing to.
Pick it up like it came with the territory.

Most of the things you're worried about today
were never addressed to you.

Somebody put them down nearby.
You're allowed to keep walking.

You took the work because it was there.
It filled the gap. It paid.

Now the hours don't suit and somehow it became a grievance.

But you said yes.
Nobody had to ask twice.

The inconvenient parts came with the convenient ones.

You can push back. You can walk away.

But taking the money and resenting the job is just wanting it both ways.

That's the tax on saying yes.

Last week I asked for red-tails.
Drove home with the silence instead.

This week I asked again.

A hundred came.

Camera up for all of it.
Every frame too full. Wing tips. Tail flash.
Half a bird at a time.

The universe heard me this time.
Sent more than I knew what to do with.

You don't get to choose the portion size.

A week ago I was her.
Same road. Same camera. Same hope of red-tails.

Today there were a hundred of them.
I was still packing up when she pulled in.

Blue car. Window up.
Camera at the ready.

I put mine down as I drove past.
Heard the same silence she was about to hear.

She'd scan the same branches I scanned last week.
Drive the same road home with nothing.

She just didn't know I'd been her.
That the calling had already happened.

One ship has all the answers.
Every route mapped. Every risk weighed.
It hasn't left the harbour.

The other left at dawn on a feeling.
No heading. Just open water and something burning.

We praise the first for its thinking.
We envy the second for its hunger.

But neither one is the goal.

They were always on the same ship.
The rudder keeps you true.
The sails get you there.

Break either one and you drift.
Which one have you been sailing without?

Task in. Task out.
No pause. No fuss.

We call it focus.
A tight calendar. A cleared inbox.
Another Monday already lined up.

But a factory line that never stops isn't thriving.
It's the one they find cracked on a Tuesday with no warning.

Machines have scheduled downtime.
Not as a reward.
As maintenance.

If you can't name the last time you stopped to celebrate something with someone, the work hasn't been feeding you.

You've been feeding it.