The Truth About Tigers

Sitting. Observing.
Noticing. Returning.

Half an hour a day
for the past month,
showing up with the kind of discipline
that mostly goes unnoticed,
waiting for whatever benefits
people like to promise.

Then today at lunch,
you dropped an entire bowl of soup.

No swearing.
No self-lecture.
No dramatic kicking of broken ceramic
across the kitchen floor.

Just the heat of it rising,
the familiar spike of anger,
noticed and left alone.

A breath.
A towel.
The quiet work of cleaning it up.

I guess this is what progress looks like.