I folded my son’s clean clothes and thought about how little he says now

Dear Delyara, The grass stain on the knee. The slight rip at the cuff. The smell of outside still on the hoodie. The receipt in the pocket. The random sweet wrapper. The note from school. The tired face at pickup. All these fragments tell me things about his life now because he doesn’t tell me in the same easy unfiltered way he used to. I understand that. It’s age. Privacy. Growing up. Becoming. Still, sometimes standing over folded clothes feels like trying to read a child’s life by the evidence it leaves behind, and that is a lonelier version of motherhood than the one I knew before. I folded the T-shirt slowly. Not because it needed me. Because I did.