By Charles M. Sumid     Copyright 2025     Written 2001

When did she stop rushing through breakfast?
I hadn’t noticed the shift.

Now she sits with her coffee,
actually tastes it.
No more checking three screens at once.

The nervous bird energy
that filled our mornings
has settled into something
I can’t name.

Yesterday I caught her
just looking out the kitchen window.
Not waiting.
Just looking.

Her quick laugh has deepened
to something that starts lower,
lasts longer.

When did her hands
stop moving while she talks?

This morning she smiled at me
over her mug.
A smile that had nowhere else to be.

The woman who raced through twenty years
has learned to arrive
where she already is.

I’m not sure when it happened.
But I wake earlier now,
just to sit
in this new quiet
she’s made of our mornings.