Early mournings

I've been finding it impossible to cry for my mother these days, impossible to feel the weight of missing her without feeling what the rest of the world is missing, how heavily so many are moving along the Earth. Those who don't See the grief feel invisible, existing in a way I cannot understand (the same way I probably exist to them).

I wake up in the middle of the night, wonder what time it is halfway across the world, wonder what it must be like to live only on instinct, focused solely on surviving the day, debating if you want to. I wake up in the morning, sit in my quiet living room, and listen to the noises that come with my privilege -- the heat dancing through the radiators, the dishwasher humming in chorus with the dryer.

.

How can I remotely understand the fleeting, desperate thoughts collectively surging through a million minds so far away? How can I pretend millions of hearts are not breaking as I sip my coffee, change for work? How can I even begin to imagine what is being lost while we sit in clean clothes in warm houses, debating whether others deserve to exist? When will we be willing enough to shed all the identities and masks we wear that allow us to see others as different, misaligned, to finally want to protect the human in us all?

.

I miss my mother. I miss their mothers. I go to work. I scroll to learn the latest death toll. I wonder how much more grief the world can hold.