“Two days.”
She tells me this every morning,
while I help button her cardigan.
Two days, she says again,
with a hope so bright it almost convinces me too.
The calendar on the wall
has forgotten how to move forward for her.
Every sunrise resets the promise.
Two days, I nod gently,
because what else can you do,
when someone is waiting
for a home that time quietly took away?
I don’t correct her.
Because hope is the one thing
her mind still remembers how to hold.
And I wonder
how a heart can hold the same hope,
every single day, for years.
So I smooth her hair and say we’ll see.
Because breaking a heart once
is kinder than breaking it every morning
when she wakes up.
Two days from home.
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