The Tilted Gospel: A Poetic Dissection of Work-Home Balance

A conversation between my shadow and my mirror

You,
are always brushing teeth in a clock’s mouth—
mint foam and half dreams curling
in the corner of your lips.
Morning tastes like an unpaid invoice and the
ghost of a child’s cry from another room.

Me?
I brew coffee strong enough to keep illusions afloat.
I pour it into a chipped mug that says Best Dad Ever
though the D is fading,
like the memory of the last time I said
No, I can’t take that call right now.

You cradle the phone in one hand,
the baby in the other,
the mind in neither.

Balance is not a beam, darling.
It’s a tightrope over an inbox of unread apologies,
spilled milk meetings,
and digital calendars that don't sync with souls.

You shout I'll be there in five,
and mean it,
but traffic means it differently.
You whisper Just five more minutes,
to the child and to the deadline.
Neither forgives you.

I once tried to plan the hours—
color-coded blocks of serenity.
Work was blue, home was yellow,
lunch was a green mirage
that dissolved under fluorescent light.
I even scheduled spontaneous laughter—
but forgot to tell my heart.

Your fingers type while your brain
drafts a grocery list
on the margins of a budget proposal.
You CC’d yourself on guilt.
BCC’d regret.
Replied all to silence.

Meanwhile,
I’m learning to kiss my partner
between bullet points.
Insert passion into Google Slides.
Search history:
How to be present when you're never not needed.

You, you’re listening to lullabies
through Bluetooth earbuds
while revising quarterly targets.
Your child’s voice echoes through noise cancellation—
a ghost in the spreadsheet.
You are all mute buttons
and frozen screens
and eyes that say
I want to come home but I never left work.

Me?
I have a plant named PTO.
I water it with promises I don’t keep.
It’s turning yellow.
It hasn’t bloomed since the last time
I danced in the kitchen
without checking Slack.

And Slack—
a whip made of emojis and read receipts.
“Just checking in”
means “I don’t believe you’ve earned
that breath you’re taking.”

You write OOO till Friday
but respond to emails on Saturday.
You call it dedication.
I call it a curse
spelled in Helvetica.

Home is a soft chaos,
all crumbs and cuddles and questions
you don’t have answers for.
Why is the sky blue?
Why does Mommy cry in the bathroom?
Why do you love work more than me?

You don’t.
But love doesn’t make noise
as loud as deadlines do.
Love doesn’t ping you
at 2:47 AM asking for revisions.

I tell myself
every email is a pebble.
I’m building a castle or a grave.
Depends on the weather
and whether anyone notices
I haven’t touched my guitar in weeks.

You bake cookies at midnight
to apologize for absence.
You eat them standing over the sink,
taste-testing for guilt.

I fold laundry like it’s origami—
each shirt a paper crane
wishing for more hours.
A sock becomes
a metaphor for unity.
I lost its pair somewhere
between ambition and exhaustion.

You have alarms for everything
except when to stop.
You forget your own birthday
but remember the Wi-Fi password
to three different offices.

I want to tell you
balance is a myth invented
by people who sell planners.
I want to tell you
sometimes collapse is the answer.
Sometimes the floor needs to catch you.

You dream in bullet points.
I daydream in ellipses…
We both want to be
a little more dot-dot-dot
and a little less full stop.

You are chasing a version of yourself
who said I can do it all.
I am mourning the version
who said I don’t have to.

We meet in the mirror
at 11:49 PM—
you brushing away fatigue,
me trying to recognize the reflection
in the still-lit bathroom.
Did we eat today?
Did we play today?
Did we pause?

You are the echo.
I am the source.
But we sound the same.
Always.

I’ll sleep when it’s done.
I’ll rest when they’re grown.
I’ll breathe next week.

But next week is already crowded.
It has your name on it.
And mine.
And that task
no one else will do.

So tonight,
let’s call truce.
You, with your empire of expectations.
Me, with my house of hopes.

Let’s put the phone face down.
Let’s kiss someone for no reason.
Let’s leave dishes in the sink.
Let’s read that book
with voices,
not just eyes.

Let’s say
Not tonight,
to the ping.
And Yes, now,
to the tickle fight.

Maybe balance isn’t even.
Maybe balance is ugly,
imperfect,
a seesaw that creaks but doesn’t break.
Maybe it’s you saying I don’t know,
and me saying That’s okay.

Maybe it’s a question
we never answer
but always ask
while holding hands
with our own reflection.

How do you balance work and home life?

You don’t.
You live in the tilt.
You dance on the edge.
You forgive the fall.

And sometimes,
sometimes—
you just stop asking.

Tilted Gospel

I stopped asking the question when I realized
it was never mine to answer.
I borrowed it from break room banter,
from leadership workshops
where the speaker wore polished shoes
and no visible fatigue.
He said balance is a mindset—
I nodded,
but my neck ached from the lie.

No,
balance is not a mindset.
It’s a muscle,
and mine trembles
under the weight of my own expectations.

I once believed I could calibrate the days—
that I was a machine made of empathy and steel.
By 9, I’d conquer emails.
By 12, I'd inhale lunch between texts.
By 6, I’d morph into warmth,
read bedtime stories with soul,
and not stare at the blinking cursor of my to-do list
in the shape of my child’s face.

But I learned
that being present isn’t a checkbox.
It's a war against ghosts.
Ghosts of Should’ve been there
and Why did I miss that moment?
They rattle my sleep like overdue alarms.

At some point,
I became fluent in sighs—
short ones for meetings,
long ones for missed calls from home.
I apologize now in silence,
in extra chocolate chips in their cookies,
in weekend plans that I cancel less often.

There was a Tuesday—
the kind that unfolds in grayscale.
I watched my son draw a house
with no windows.
I asked him why.
He shrugged,
said “That’s how it feels when you’re not home.”
I swallowed guilt like broken glass.
No ergonomic chair prepared me for that.

So I stopped pretending I had it all figured out.
I stopped measuring love in minutes
and started measuring it in attention.
The kind that listens,
really listens—
not the nodding-while-scrolling kind.

Some nights,
I still work late.
But now I tell them why.
Now I let them sit beside me
with crayons and questions.
Now, the silence we share
feels less like neglect
and more like understanding.

I’ve learned to romanticize the in-between.
The drive home is no longer purgatory.
It is music,
it is unwinding,
it is breath.
Sometimes I pull over
just to feel the sky.
Balance isn’t always motion.
Sometimes, it’s knowing when to stop.

And I’ve made peace with dishes in the sink,
with unfolded laundry,
with dinners that are more assemble than cook.
No one remembers gourmet meals.
But they remember laughter.
They remember when you turned off your phone.
They remember when you looked into their eyes
instead of the screen.

There was a Friday
when I skipped a call
to watch my daughter dance in the living room.
Her limbs didn’t obey rhythm—
but my heart did.
It tapped a rhythm only she could conduct.
And for once,
I didn’t think of what I was missing elsewhere.
I was entirely, joyfully misplaced.

I used to chase balance like a currency.
Like a promotion waiting at the end
of a perfectly weighted scale.
But no.
It’s not earned.
It’s chosen.
In every moment where I say not now to urgency
and yes please to the unrepeatable.

I found it in socks that never match.
In cereal dinners.
In blanket forts and missed messages.
In slow Sundays.
In wild hair and unplanned naps.

I no longer carve my worth
out of productivity reports.
I no longer seek identity
in meeting invites.
I’ve returned pieces of myself
to those who missed me.

My child doesn’t care
about my inbox zero.
She cares if I notice
the sparkle sticker on her notebook.
She cares that I laugh
when she forgets punchlines.

So, I’ve let go
of the myth of equilibrium.
Instead, I flow—
a river between rocks,
sometimes rushing,
sometimes resting.
Sometimes dried up.
Sometimes wild.

And it’s messy.
And it’s flawed.
And I still falter.
But I do it with more grace now,
more softness,
more knowing that
I am not two people split in duty.
I am one person loving in two directions.

And when they ask—
“How do you balance work and home life?”
I say,
I don’t.

I blend.
I break.
I rebuild.
I burn out and rekindle.
I tilt.
I turn.
I trust.
I try.

And some days,
trying is the most sacred act of all.