Zebra Seeking Spoons

Morning arrives

not with possibility

but with inventory.

How many spoons today?

How many small permissions

to move,

to think,

to exist in the world?

Others wake into abundance—

forkfuls of plans,

arms full of hours.

But I wake counting.

One spoon for getting up.

One spoon for answering a message.

One spoon for pretending

I am not already tired.

The math of illness

is quiet and relentless.

And loneliness grows

in the spaces between spoons.

Friends talk about tomorrow

like it’s guaranteed land.

Trips.

Dinners.

Long bright days.

I nod

from the edge of the field

where my spoons are planted

like fragile silver stems.

Here,

I move slowly among them,

careful not to drop one

into the grass.

Because when the last spoon falls

the world grows very small.

A room.

A body.

A long quiet afternoon.

Still—

in the distance

I listen for hoofbeats.

Other zebras

walking their own careful paths

through their own fields of spoons.