Maybe she’s late.
Maybe traffic.
Maybe a friend’s house.
Then the clock
sharpens.
Minutes grow teeth.
She could be lost.
Stuck in school.
Stuck in a bus
that forgot its route.
Or worse-
someone took her.
The mind doesn’t pause.
It doubles down-
Kidnapped.
Trafficked. Sold.
A room with no windows.
A life rewritten
without consent.
suspicious containers.
dingy brothels.
The headlines you
scroll past daily
start rehearsing
inside your skull.
Upon that-
What will people say?
How do you tell relatives?
What answer is safe?
What version of truth
can survive their gaze?
and if she returns-
how do you hold her?
How do you ask
without breaking her again?
How do you protect
her from the house that
failed her?
And how do you
protect yourself while
the guilt gleams till
it blinds everyone around?
You wait and wait batling
all thoughts, till
the house becomes
a waiting room
for catastrophe.
Phones repeatedly
locked and unlocked.
Doors half-open.
Breath uneven-
Every sound
pretends to be her.
Every silence
proves it isn’t.
And then-
the door opens.
She walks in.
Normal. Hungry.
Unaware of the war
she triggered.
Seven hours collapse
into one breath.
Relief floods loud,
unceremonious,
almost angry.
All the imagined horrors
fold away.
No one speaks
of what almost happened.
But everyone knows-
how quickly
the world can end
inside a mind,
and how quietly
it resumes
when a child
just walks back in.