I Cried While Looking for the Car Keys

Dear Delyara, It wasn’t really about the keys. They were somewhere in the house, of course. Somewhere ordinary. Somewhere stupid. Somewhere I had probably put them myself while carrying too many other things at the same time. But by the third room, by the second coat pocket, by the first “Mum, have you seen…?” from upstairs, I could feel tears already there. Not dramatic crying. Not loud. Just the kind that arrives when one tiny practical problem lands on a body already carrying too much invisible weight. I found the keys in the fruit bowl. That somehow made it worse. Because I stood there with metal in my hand thinking, this is what my life feels like now — important things in the wrong places, and me moving through rooms trying not to break tone while I recover them.