Fragile

it was a day like any other over the past 10 years:
making lunches, serving breakfast,
a 10 hour work day, drained and running on empty,
crossing one thing after another off an endless to-do list,
making the dinner and doing the dishes,
folding the laundry,
too few smiles,
forced hugs,
unspoken and misunderstood resentments,
layered one upon the other and set in mortar,
a brick wall seemingly too tall to scale,
treading water in a sea so seemingly vast and deep,
she knew she couldn’t go on treading forever

she didn’t care to –
she knew it was time to chip and chisel,
time to dive,
deep

and after her shower at the end of the day,
she sat on the edge of the bed, restless,
fed up,
tired of the cycle on repeat, repeat,
lost, yet grasping at the first threads of found,
looking at herself in the mirror,
seeing

in that moment,
she realized how fragile happiness is,
how, if you’re careless,
you can walk right past it,
how it’s possible to love so hard and hope so much,
and end up with nothing,
nothing that really matters

and she wasn’t going to let that happen

-image via Tumblr