Âmî Jey

Playtime Observations

I kneel beside blocks, building towers,
fragile structures, toppling truths.
A small hand brushes mine,
desperate for something solid,
something that will not fall.

His eyes dart to the corner,
where screens flicker stories
he doesn’t belong to.
He is a shadow in his own home—
quiet, still, forgotten.

I hear her voice like an echo:
“I can’t take this behavior anymore.”
Normal, wild, restless behavior—
like a sapling bending toward light.
She clips the branches,
calls the roots unruly.

But I see her, too.
Worn thin, emptied out,
buried beneath routines—
work, feeding, bathing, cleaning.
She holds up the world
and cannot hold herself.

I count breaths. Swallow words.
He doesn’t deserve to be soil for blame.
And yet, I cannot save him
with finger paints and praise.
When the session ends, I gather my notes,
and a part of myself too—
the child who wanted someone
to stop the leaving.

I tell him he did well.
He looks at me as if I’ve given him
an entire sky—his first glimpse of blue.
But the door closes.
Behind it, silence grows weeds.
Screens hum lullabies.
A mother’s exhaustion seeps
into the walls.
And I sit in my car, staring at my hands,
knowing I cannot untangle roots
that were planted long before I arrived.
Yet I carry the weight
of wanting to be more than a visitor—
of hoping that I leave behind enough seeds
for him to find his own way
out of the weeds.

I drive away
with the echoes of towers falling,
and the silent scream
of what I cannot fix.
And still,
I build again.