You are the last one
still carrying it.

There is something you did years ago that comes back when the house goes quiet. A sentence that came out wrong. A time you were not there. Something small enough that you have never told anybody, and heavy enough that it turns up at eleven at night.

Here is the part worth knowing. The other person has most likely forgotten. Not because it did not matter, but because everybody is busy carrying their own, and what we replay at night was rarely the headline for anyone else.

If it can still be put right, put it right — in daylight, when something can actually be done about it. Tonight there is nothing to do with it but turn it over, and turning it over has never once repaired anything.

There is an old habit, older than any of us, of handing the day over before sleep. The words hardly matter. It is the setting down that does the work.

Set it down. If it still wants carrying in the morning, it will say so.