The Tears That Lie Beneath

Date: 12/24/2025

Mum isn’t quite herself today. Not broken, exactly — just misaligned, like a picture knocked crooked on the wall that no one wants to straighten because it might fall. Her eyes look tired in a way sleep can’t fix. Her sentences arrive half-packed, trailing off as if she’s lost the thread halfway through thinking them. I suggest — gently — that we take a rain check on Sacred Monday. That we postpone our ritual. That we give her permission to rest. She refuses immediately. We don’t call them sacred for nothing. Sacred Monday is what she reaches for when everything else feels like it’s going under. Coffee, a drive, a routine — something predictable to cling to while everything else erodes. While her brother slowly dissolves inside his own head. While she watches him forget names, faces, time itself. While she learns — without ever saying it — that this forgetting might be hereditary. She grips the steering wheel like it’s the last thing anchoring her to this world. Her knuckles glow white, bloodless. I see it all: the weight pulling her shoulders forwards, the heavy crescents beneath her eyes, the way control has become a way of keeping everything else sealed inside. She’s wrong. She isn’t in control. We’re on a roundabout — except we aren’t circling. We’re going the wrong way. Entirely wrong. Head-on wrong. My feet slam an imaginary brake pedal, useless, frantic. I’d normally scream, but the words have dissolved on my tongue. Instead, I close my eyes and try to will reality into compliance. Please don’t let us die today. A lorry barrels towards us, monstrous and unavoidable — — and the world blinks. The road flips its rules. The steering wheel becomes American. The danger rearranges itself. The lorry swerves, horn blaring, the driver red-faced with fury. “Look where you’re going, knucklehead!” Mum yells, laughing — laughing — like this is the best joke she’s heard in years. Her laughter is unhinged, electric. It cracks something open in me. I let her have it. Her laughter feels unfamiliar, like something I didn’t realise I’d been grieving. We don’t stop at our usual coffee shop. Instead, she parks outside a grim apartment block. “Right,” she says brightly. “Let’s deliver the good news.” The good news turns out to be speeding tickets. Hand-delivered. Festive. Cruel. I take a thick stack and tuck them under my arm like small, folded punishments. We knock on doors. Smiles curdle. Hope collapses. A £70 fine lands a day before Christmas like a brick through a window. Their misery feeds us. It shouldn’t — but it does. “That’ll serve the fuckers right,” Mum snickers. One man tells us exactly where to shove it. A young mother nearly cries, her face crumpling like paper. A third man drops his ticket carefully into recycling, as though bureaucracy might be undone by good intentions. It won’t. It will multiply. It always does. When we’re finished, the air feels scorched, like something’s burned through it. As Mum pushes open the lobby door, I notice her arms. Writing. Everywhere. Notes etched into skin. Names. Dates. Fragments of sentences. Reminders climbing from wrist to elbow like ivy. “What’s that?” I ask quietly. “To remind me who I am,” she says, without looking at me. I nod. No words are needed. I understand. The moment gutters out like a burning ticket and suddenly — I’m somewhere else. Watkins Toy Shop. A relic. A shrine. Lantern-light warmth spills through criss-cross windows, beckoning. Mat peers inside, hopeful. “Shall we?” “Please,” I say, too quickly. We don’t need toys. Our children have outgrown magic. They traded imagination for screens and sarcasm. But inside, everything glows. Bells. Trains. Wooden animals polished smooth by decades of longing. The magic still lives inside of me. The shop is packed. Panic-buyers. Noise. Heat. And then I notice Mat’s backpack. It’s leaking. Not dripping — flooding. Water pours through torn seams, cascading onto the floor like grief finally giving up. His face drains of colour. “My phone!” He digs desperately, hands shaking, and pulls it out — soaked, lifeless. I wrap it in my jumper, rubbing, coaxing, pretending resurrection is possible if I love hard enough. I know it’s futile. I do it anyway. Three women stare at me. Three generations of judgment. Eyes sharp as needles. I smile because that’s what you do when everything else is drowning. They soften. Almost. The shop grows quieter. The lights buzz too loudly. The water keeps spreading, creeping towards my shoes. No one else seems to notice. I peer down. The water isn’t coming from the bag anymore. It’s coming from me. Seeping through my sleeves. Dripping from my hands. Clear, endless. Silent. I try to stop it. I clench my fists. I hold my breath. I swallow hard. Nothing works. The water pools at my feet, reflecting my face — calm, smiling, composed. Words begin to surface beneath the water, written in mum's familiar looping script, drifting up slowly as if they’ve been held down for years. Don’t cry. Be strong. Hold it together. I open my mouth to scream — to finally let something escape — but all that escapes is silence. No sound. No tears. Just the steady, polite leaking. The shop lights flicker. And I wake up. Dry-eyed. Heart racing. Pillows untouched. No tears. Not a single one. Only the quiet inheritance of everything held in — the downpour of unspoken grief, the weight of silence beneath our skin, and the words we etch into ourselves to remember who we are.