I’m staring at this plate. Chicken, mashed potatoes, peas. Mom’s favorite. Well, it USED to be. Now it’s just… food. Food I put in front of her, food she poked at with a fork for ten minutes, food I now have to throw away. Again. She’s asleep in front of the TV, snoring. I should be grateful. No yelling tonight. No calling me by my sister’s name. No asking where her mother is. Just… blessed silence. And this cold, uneaten dinner. The kids left last month. Both of them. Off to college. It’s quiet now. Too quiet. Like the house swallowed something important and won’t cough it back up. My husband, he’s in the garage. Always in the garage. Tinkering. Says it helps him think. Sometimes I think he just likes the noise of the power tools. Anything to not hear the silence. Or her. Or me. We barely talk anymore. It’s just logistics. Who’s taking Mom to the doctor, who picked up her meds, who’s making dinner. It’s like living with a really polite roommate. A roommate who used to hold my hand and tell me I was his world. I remember when I used to love cooking. Trying new recipes. It was… a thing. Something I did. Now it’s just another chore. Another thing on the list. Get up, get her up, meds, breakfast, shower, clean up, lunch, activities she doesn’t understand, meds, dinner, bed. Repeat. Every single day. I told her today, "It’s chicken tonight, Mom." She just looked at me. Blank. Like I was speaking Mandarin. My stomach is growling but I can’t make myself lift this fork. It’s like my hands just forgot how. I used to have dreams. Plans. A whole list of things I was going to do once the kids were grown. Travel. Learn pottery. Write that terrible novel I always thought about. Now I just… exist. I exist for her. I exist for this house. I exist for the endless loop of care and cleanup. Who the HELL am I supposed to be now? When did this become my entire life? I just want to scream. Or cry. Or run away. But I can’t. I can’t leave her. I just… can’t. So I sit here. Staring at this plate. And the silence. The GODDAMN silence.