The Weight of the World Was Too Much

By Peter Bowden

She woke with the sense that something had settled on her in the night, a heaviness she hadn’t invited yet carried all the same. The room was still, washed in the gray light that comes before the sun makes up its mind. She sat on the edge of the bed and let her feet find the floor, feeling the cool boards steady her. The weight didn’t shift, didn’t ease, but she breathed against it, holding the breath the way a person holds the rail of a small boat in a rising tide.

In the kitchen, she moved slowly, each action a quiet negotiation. Water into a pot. Flame catching with a soft blue sigh. The ordinary things had become markers, small proof that she could still move in the world even when the world pressed back. Through the window, she saw a single bird on the wire, its chest lifting against the morning as though nothing heavy had ever touched it. For a moment she let herself believe in that kind of weightlessness, thin as a dream but no less real for it.

When the tea was ready, she wrapped both hands around the warm cup and stood very still. The steam rose in delicate threads, curling like something trying to remind her that light can climb even in the tightest spaces. She didn’t pretend the burden was gone. She only understood, in that quiet corner of the day, that she didn’t have to lift everything at once. Just herself. Just this moment. And sometimes that was the beginning of strength.

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