Stewardship

Everything hurts
where they pulled her apart—
the seams of her spirit fraying
beneath hands that only ever take.

She is the one they summon
when the silence grows unbearable,
when the burden must be shifted,
when a body is needed to stand steady.
And she gives—
her hours, her marrow, her breath—
until even the hollow of her bones
trembles with absence.

No one asks the cost.
No one sees the shattering
veiled behind her tempered smile.
They see only the fortress she becomes—
walls raised from her exhaustion,
foundations laid with her silence.

She is needed everywhere
and cherished nowhere.
Her body, her heart,
her days—
sliced into offerings
to keep others whole.
Even her unraveling must be graceful,
even her collapse must look composed.

Everything hurts
where they pulled her apart—
yet still she rises,
stitched from fragments no one bothered to gather,
a woman built from her own undoing,
holding up the sky of everyone else’s world
while hers dissolves,
unnoticed,
into dust she is never allowed to mourn.

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