Split Reality

The Split Reality

There’s a kind of ache that doesn’t scream.
It just sits with you—quietly, politely—while you make tea.
While you pack lunches.
While you scroll past the war, the fire, the face of a child who is no longer alive.

And somehow, you still laugh at your child’s joke.
You still choose which bread to buy.
You still wonder if that email sounded too harsh.

And subconsciously, survival is being braided into your grief.
It’s what it means to live with a split-screen soul.
The mind builds walls around what it can hold.
It says: “The world is burning and this mango is sweet.”

You’re awake.
The coffee is brewing and the steady hum of your home settling into the morning routine is soothing, satisfying.
The child you love stumbles in with bedhead and a plastic dinosaur and says something so ridiculous, you laugh. Before your brain can stop you.
Before you remember. And for a few seconds, it’s just that. Morning. Coffee. Laughter.

And in the next room, the TV is on— photos of rubble, smoke, a mother screaming words in a language you don’t speak.

While the laugh still echoes in your kitchen.
And the coffee is still warm.

And you wonder: How can both of these things be true?

You’re standing at the sink, washing rice in circles like your mother taught you.
The grains of rice swirl through your fingers and around the bowl.
It’s rhythmic.
The water turns cloudy, you drain and repeat and somewhere in the house, someone is singing off-key.
The day is ordinary.
You have bills to pay, an email to answer, a bruise on your leg you don’t remember getting.

Across the ocean, a boy your son’s age is wrapped in white cloth, nameless to you, unforgettable to someone else.
You press your fingers into the grains and keep rinsing. Dinner is necessary.

At work, someone jokes about the intern’s spelling mistake.
You laugh, and the sound betrays you.
Who are you?
The question stings.
The moment passes.

The printer is jammed. There’s free cake in the break room.
You check your phone and see footage of a burning hospital.

You scroll past. You scroll back.
You feel sick.

You eat the cake anyway. It did nothing.

Your child asks you what war is. You pause, spoon halfway to your mouth.
You want to say it’s far away, a long time ago. Something that doesn’t happen here.
But you lie instead.

Because the truth is, it does.
It’s in the headlines and the hunger, the sirens that only come for certain neighborhoods.
It’s in the border walls and the blood-soaked sand. It’s in the silence you learned to keep.

You say, “It’s complicated.” Your child nods like they understand.
You turn away quickly before their innocence crushes you.

You’re standing at the edge of your pond, watching the grey-green water not move.
The solar pump—your eco-conscious choice—sits useless in the shade, because the sun hasn’t shown her face in days.

You wonder if anything you’ve done to live better even matters.
You buy organic food.
You reused jars.
You composted your grief.

But still—here you are.
And the sorrow remains.

You realize, suddenly, painfully, the pond was never about water.
You built it to keep from drowning.
You built it so you’d have something small, something beautiful, to tend to while everything else collapsed.

And then without warning: What if they tell you that you don’t belong here?
What if you’re stripped, sent “home” to a place you don’t know?
You cannot step into the same river twice.

She’s teaching multiplication tables in a classroom with flickering lights.
There’s mold in the ceiling tiles.
The heater rattles like it’s choking.

Half the class hasn’t eaten since yesterday. The other half is pretending not to notice.

Her phone buzzes—a headline: another school shooting.
She reads it in the space between breathing.
She erases the board, bites her lips to stop the tears, and keeps going.

He waters his tomatoes every morning. Checks the leaves for blight.
Hums a song his grandfather used to sing.

Somewhere close by, a wildfire rages through the lives of strangers.
Someone’s mementos are burning, and the air smells faintly of smoke.
He tells himself it’s just the neighbor’s grill.
He laughs, to escape.

A wedding. Laughter. Music. Henna.
Family.
Someone gives a toast about love surviving anything.

No one mentions the drone strike that morning.
How many lives?
The unspoken consensus to embrace this moment is unspoken, but loud.

The dress is beautiful, so is the bride.
The dead are the ghosts you live with.

An influencer posts a smoothie bowl— blue spirulina, chia seeds, edible flowers.
“Start your morning with beauty,” the caption reads.

An old woman lost in time, forgotten, stirs powdered milk into dirty water.
No caption, but her morning has begun.
Both pray.
For different things.

The news cycle loops like a chant.
Corruption. Fire. Flood. Shooting. Coup. And then: sports highlights.
And then: a toothpaste ad.

You feel like screaming.
Instead, you scroll, you pause.
You stare out the window at the apple tree as the tears, unbidden, fall.

You tell someone you’re tired. They nod. Everyone is tired.

But no one says what we’re tired of.
How many times can you repeat, We are tired of pretending this is normal.
It’s understood with just a nod now.

He plants a tree. A sapling. Small.
The forecast predicts more storms this season.
He doesn’t know if it will survive.

He plants it anyway.
And wonders if, just for a moment, the earth has stopped grieving.
He brushes the tears away. Straightens himself.

A child is born today. Somewhere.
We’re standing in that moment.
In this split screen reality.

She opens her eyes.

And still— the mango is sweet.

What is truth?