My Son at the Table

But for Jonas, something had been building quietly inside him for weeks—something heavy, unnamed, and slowly hardening.

When Mrs. Delgado wrote the assignment on the board, no one hesitated.

“Write one sentence about your home.”

The other children smiled, leaned over their notebooks, and began immediately.

One girl wrote about her dog sleeping at the foot of her bed.

A boy wrote about movie nights and popcorn.