All The Times We Bend

Life does not shatter us outright.
It is more patient than that.
It presses slow,
like water carving stone,
like grief returning in the quiet hours
when no one is watching.

We bend beneath its weight—
the betrayals spoken in half-truths,
the losses that hollow us,
the small cruelties that accumulate
like rust on the soul.
We bend when love is not returned,
when hope goes unkept,
when tomorrow comes dressed
as another day of endurance.

We tell ourselves this is strength—
to curve and not to crack,
to bow and still keep breathing.
But every angle of that bending
etches itself into our marrow.
The spine remembers.
The heart keeps count.
And somewhere inside,
we know we are not the same.

There is sadness in the unbroken.
A sorrow in having lived
so long in the posture of surrender
that standing straight again
feels almost foreign.
Our laughter is crooked now,
our joy tinged with the memory
of how often we have bent
just to survive the storm.

All the time we bend.
For family.
For silence.
For the fragile illusion of safety.
For the ache of one more day
that looks too much like the last.

And though we rise again—
we do—
we rise carrying the grief
that survival is not wholeness,
that strength is not peace,
that to be unbroken
is sometimes only another word
for scarred.Keep My Words Alive

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