Still

He has learned, over time, by consequence, by the slow accumulation of what happens when nothing releases and nothing resolves, that there is a form of restraint that does not resemble peace but containment, a holding-in where the mouth remains closed because there is too much and no place left where it can be set down. It stays behind the teeth, settles into the chest, presses upward into the throat, and even breathing, which once required no thought at all, has become something governed, something measured and portioned, drawn in carefully as though excess might break something loose and released just as deliberately. Even air must now be managed.

He lies back. The body requires a position in which to continue. His hands move across his chest without instruction, a posture that mirrors something closer to burial than rest, and when he becomes aware of it he does not move them away. To correct it would be dishonest. He remains. Still, but not at rest.

Morning arrives. He rises. The road is unchanged. The horizon holds the same unbroken line it held yesterday, and the day before, and every day that has passed without return. He looks anyway.

At the basin he pauses, and what looks back at him is recognizable but unresolved, as though the image cannot fully settle into itself. He washes. He finishes what must be done. He goes out.

The son who remained is there, present, near, loved, and yet even within that closeness there is a carefulness, a measured distance maintained by protection, as though one wrong movement might shift a weight that neither of them can carry for the other. The boy says he does not know what is true. The father tells him he understands. Both statements are exact. Both are insufficient. Both are necessary. To press beyond that would be to place the burden onto the one who stayed, and this he will not do. So again he chooses silence, the same discipline that governs his breath, his posture, his days.

And somewhere, beyond reach and beyond knowledge, his sons are living without him.

He looks to the horizon the way a man revisits a wound that has refused to close, unable to disengage from what remains open.

He no longer goes himself every time. There was a cost he did not recognize until it had already been paid. So now he sends another.

Go, and look.

Nothing.

Again.

Nothing.

Again.

Nothing.

Seven times the command is given, and seven times it returns empty, and still he does not move from where he stands.

The road remains vacant.

He turns back inside, lowers himself again into the same position, hands across his chest, breath regulated, mouth closed, because there is still no permission to release what is being held.

And so he remains there.

And he waits.