Where Cruelty Should Never Be

I saw cruelty

in a place that smelled like bread.

It was sitting quietly at the kitchen table,

between a cup of tea

and someone's unfinished sentence.

No one noticed at first.

The curtains kept breathing.

The clock kept swallowing minutes.

Outside, a bird was teaching its babies

how to trust the air.

Then someone said something cruel

and the room became smaller.

Not darker,

smaller.

As if the walls had grown tired

of protecting us.

I have always thought cruelty

would announce itself with thunder,

with wolves at the door,

with fire climbing the stairs.

But sometimes

it wears your father's shirt.

Sometimes it has your mother's voice.

Sometimes it is a stranger

who smiles before breaking something

inside you.

And the strangest part,

the flowers on the windows-ill

did not die.

They kept turning toward the sun

as if they had never heard us.

As if the world had not just done

what the world does best:

put a wound

in the wrong place,

then ask the wounded

why they are bleeding.