Joy With Nowhere To Land

File this under: things I learned by celebrating alone.

The email lands: approved. You exhale at your desk, hand over your mouth like you might scare it away. You type “omg” to no one, then backspace the letters and close the tab.

On the way home you rehearse the short version, the funny version, the proud version. You pick one. You park. The living room is on its phone. “Nice,” it says without looking up. “Dinner at six?”

You set the cupcake on the counter. You set the news beside it. Only one of them keeps.

Later, you run the dishwasher for two bowls because measuring joy in plates feels less pathetic than counting silences. The text you wanted doesn’t come. A different one does. “Busy. Raincheck.”

Here’s the math no one teaches: attention is oxygen. You can live on low levels for longer than you should. You will call it “fine.”

So you bring the story here instead, to the only room that listens every time: the page. Not to explain it away, just to mark the moment like a notch on a doorframe.

Someone will find it. Someone will nod.
And even if they don’t, you did.

You were the witness.
You were home.