Ballast

The body remembers what the mouth edits out.

That is how we survive—

by redacting the evidence

of our own trembling.

My mother taught me to fold grief

into fitted sheets,

to tuck corners so sharp

they could cut through doubt.

Company is coming, she’d say,

as if sorrow were a stain

that needed dabbing.

I learned the choreography early:

chin level, voice even,

hands steady as parked cars.

But underneath—

an aquarium of unspoken things

pressing their small, glassy faces

against the ribs.

I carried my father’s silence

like a library book overdue—

careful not to crease the pages,

terrified of the fine.

The year he left,

the walls leaned closer.

Even the clocks developed opinions.

Bananas are rich in potassium.

I did not mean to say that.

It arrived like a grocery list

in the middle of a eulogy.

Still—

the air did not correct me.

No thunderbolt.

No coughing priest.

Just the slow swivel

of heads

like sunflowers seeking coherence.

What I meant was:

there are nutrients in leaving.

There are minerals in absence.

Something invisible

keeps the heart firing

even when it wants to quit.

But meaning is greedy.

It wants to stitch every tear

into a moral.

So I let the sentence sit there—

yellow, unpeeled,

bruising on the counter

of our stunned faces.

You can measure a life

in sodium and regret.

In teaspoons of apology.

In how long you can hold your breath

before the water becomes you.

The body remembers

what the mouth edits out.

And sometimes it blurts

something round and ordinary

in the middle of catastrophe.

No metaphor.

No rescue.

Just a fact

resting where it does not belong,

heavy as ballast

in a boat

that may or may not

be sinking.