Mummy’s Floor

The morning hit like a serpent in true form.
Uncalled. Nasty. Venom poured and warm.
I returned to Mummy’s floor, dust curling around my hands, light slicing through cracks.
How does anyone survive when poison is the norm?
It spits you out on the quiet, deformed.

The walls, the air, the floor beneath your feet—everything conspires in a small, invisible assault.
Even the light feels like judgment.

I sank.
Not metaphorically—literally.
Swabbing the floor beneath my feet, a little physical hurt to numb the beat.
The sting in my hands, the ache in my knees—it was tangible. Something I could feel instead of the chaos pounding inside my chest.
It took me somewhere I hadn’t been too long,
Though my body felt like a ransacked car—or a door gone wrong.
Every joint screamed, every breath was a reminder that survival isn’t neat, it’s messy, and sometimes humiliating.

Then, I saw it.
My mother’s floor.
Not just the stone resting place—but her presence imprinted in the dust, in the small leaves that had crept through the cracks, in the quiet hum of absence.
First day after the show that never was. No audience. Just me, the floor, the dust, and the faint sunlight sneaking through the window.
I sat anyway. My hands ran over the floor, wiping, brushing, touching, grounding.
I read her short engraved note aloud: “Soon, you shall be where I breathe in light.”

Time felt strange there.
The world outside continued, indifferent, but here, suspended between dust and memory, grief was slow.
It whispered lessons in ways you don’t notice until later:
That poison may be everywhere, but it cannot claim the totality of your existence.
That memory—your mother’s memory—can be a quiet mentor, guiding your hands, your heart, your spine, when the day feels like a trap.

I remembered the shows that never happened.
The applause that never came.
The letters unsent, the words unspoken, the audience I never found.
Yet, in this floor, in this quiet corner of light and shadow, I understood something.
Grief isn’t only loss.
It’s also a map.
It tells you where the light hides, where the venom seeps, where you might rise again.

Some mornings, you crawl.
Other mornings, you spit back.
Still, some mornings are only for sitting.
Sitting on your mother’s floor.
Feeling her light, her absence, her strength, and your own raw pulse beneath the skin.

And then, slowly, the world seeps back in.
Dust falls into patterns you didn’t notice before.
Leaves shift in a tiny breeze.
The engraved letters gleam just so.
A promise: even here, even now, light waits.
Not as a reward. Not as comfort. But simply—as it always has—because it’s what remains when all else dissolves.

I left then, but not empty.
I carried her floor with me.
Her lessons in touch, in stillness, in resilience.
And I walked forward, not healed, not fixed, but breathing.
With venom still in the world, yes—but with light tucked somewhere close enough to reach for.