Weeping.

Weeping fills the air, a muted dirge threading through the silence of the dimly lit living room. It’s your mother—or the woman you call mother—curled into herself on the worn couch, her face buried in trembling hands. The sound scrapes at your skin, a noise you’ve heard too often to find comforting, yet too rarely directed toward you. She doesn’t weep for you. She never has.

Calling her mother feels foreign, a word meant for someone who wants their child. You never felt wanted. Not really. Not in the way other kids described when they talked about bedtime stories or hugs after school. You weren't her problem, she’d say, when her patience had been burned away by something you did—or, more often, by your mere presence.

You stand frozen at the threshold of the room, unsure if she even knows you’re there. Her form shivers under the soft lamplight, her shoulders hitching with each shaky breath. It should make you feel something—worry, empathy, anything—but all you can muster is exhaustion. A heavy, suffocating kind of tiredness that spreads from your chest into your limbs.

Her voice breaks the silence, hoarse and brittle.

“Kakania?”

The name of her therapist slips out like a crutch, a plea for salvation. Her green-eyed savior, the one she entrusted with every piece of her that wasn’t you. She spent hours with Kakania, pouring out her soul, unraveling her pain. You’d overheard bits and pieces through walls, through doors left slightly ajar. Stories of loss. Regrets. Everything except you.

Your stomach churns as she speaks again, softer this time. “What… what am I supposed to do?”

The words hit you like a fist to the gut, even though they’re not meant for you. Maybe it’s because you’ve been asking yourself the same thing. What are you supposed to do? With her? With yourself? You have no answers, so you stay silent, your gaze fixed on the carpet, tracing the frayed edges with your eyes.

But maybe you’ve already lost everything that matters.