The Haiku of Now

This morning, the kettle almost sang.

It didn’t whistle loudly the way it usually does. It trembled at the edge of sound, a soft rising hum that seemed unsure whether it wanted to exist. I stood in the kitchen, watching the thin ribbon of steam curl upward, disappearing into nothing. For a moment, I forgot to reach for it.

Outside, the world was already awake. Cars rolled past in patient lines. A neighbor coughed. Somewhere in the distance, a door closed with more force than necessary. The day had begun without asking me if I was ready.

I used to think time arrived in hours. In appointments. In deadlines and birthdays and calendar reminders that blinked like small warnings. But lately, I’ve begun to notice it arrives differently.

It arrives in seconds so thin they could tear.

Steam fading.

Light shifting.

A breath taken and released.

Seventeen syllables could hold it, if arranged carefully.

I read once that a haiku is less about poetry and more about noticing. It is not an attempt to control a moment, but to bow to it. To say, I see you. Even if you vanish in the next breath.

When I was younger, I thought presence meant stillness. Meditation cushions. Crossed legs. Silence like a sealed room. I tried to force myself into calm, as if peace were something that could be cornered and kept.

But peace, like steam, refuses to be held.

It appears only when you are not gripping the air.

After pouring the water into my cup, I carried it to the window. The glass was cool under my fingertips. A thin crack ran diagonally across the lower pane — I had meant to fix it months ago. The flaw caught the morning light and split it gently, turning one beam into two.

For a moment, the fractured light felt more beautiful than the whole.

Across the street, a child waited for the school bus. She was swinging her backpack back and forth, missing the rhythm she was trying to create. Swing. Pause. Swing-swing. Pause.

Imperfect repetition.

Her mother stood beside her, scrolling on her phone, her face lit faintly blue.

The bus arrived. The doors folded open with a sigh. The child climbed aboard without looking back.

The moment closed.

Seventeen syllables.

I sometimes wonder how many moments collapse each day without witness. How many quiet miracles dissolve because no one was looking.

A sparrow landing.

A leaf detaching.

Someone deciding not to say something unkind.

The world is constantly offering small poems. We are simply too loud to hear them.

I used to chase larger meanings. Promotions. Milestones. Grand declarations of love that sounded like fireworks. I thought life would announce itself dramatically when it mattered most.

But the truth is softer.

Life clears its throat quietly.

It waits in the space between heartbeats.

Last autumn, my grandfather forgot my name.

He did not forget my face. He studied it carefully, as if the answer were written across my forehead. But the word — the simple arrangement of sounds that identified me — had slipped beyond his reach.

I smiled and told him again.

He repeated it slowly, tasting it like something fragile.

In that pause, before memory reattached itself, there was something pure. Not tragic. Not frightening.

Just now.

He was looking at me without history. Without expectation. Without the weight of who I had been or who I should become.

It was terrifying.

It was sacred.

A haiku is not about permanence. It is about the breath before disappearance.

Winter arrived quietly this year. No dramatic first snowfall. Just a morning when the air felt thinner and the trees stood without argument. I stepped outside and exhaled. My breath appeared in front of me, visible for a brief second before dissolving.

There it was again.

Proof that something existed.

Proof that it would not last.

I have started practicing a small ritual. Nothing ceremonial. Nothing ornate.

Whenever I feel myself rushing — checking the time, rehearsing conversations that have not yet happened, replaying ones that have — I stop and look for one small detail.

The pattern of light on the floor.

The hum inside the refrigerator.

The exact temperature of the air entering my lungs.

I do not analyze it.

I do not improve it.

I simply notice.

And in noticing, something loosens.

The world does not slow down. The traffic continues. Emails accumulate. Seasons turn without consulting me.

But inside the noticing, there is expansion.

A widening.

Seventeen syllables of space.

This afternoon, I sat in the park with a notebook open on my lap. I intended to write something profound — something about time, about loss, about the architecture of fleeting things.

Instead, I wrote:

Cold bench beneath me

Wind tangles the bare branches

Sun rests on my sleeve

It was simple. Almost embarrassingly so.

But when I looked up, I realized the sun truly was resting there — a warm square of gold against my jacket.

It had been waiting for me to see it.

The haiku did not create the moment.

The moment created the haiku.

That is the quiet secret.

We are not here to construct life into something impressive. We are here to witness it as it passes through our hands.

Steam rising.

Backpack swinging.

Name forgotten and found again.

The kettle will sing louder tomorrow. The crack in the window will eventually be repaired. The child will grow tall enough that the backpack no longer swings awkwardly at her side.

Everything changes.

But right now —

the light splits in two,

my tea cools untouched beside me,

and I am here.

Seventeen syllables.

Enough.