THE QUESTION

She answered everyone but herself.

For years the questions circled overhead, whispered like doves, landing like missiles.

Where are you from?

What do you worship?

Where did you study?

Who do you love?

Where will you go?

Each answer seemed to please one room and unsettle another. She learned to deliver them lightly, as if they belonged to someone else. The words never quite fit in her own mouth.

At first she treated the questions like riddles, puzzles that could be solved if she studied long enough. But every solution dissolved into another set of doubts. Place, faith, language, labor, family—each turned slippery the moment she reached for certainty.

So she smiled in public, let the rehearsed replies carry her through. In private, the questions multiplied. They circled the edges of her mind, waiting for silence, pressing down with the weight of wings.

No answer stayed long. Only the asking remained.

And some nights she wondered if the questions themselves were the point—if origin was less a truth to be found than a shadow meant to follow her, softly, without end.