Not Everyone

 Equivocal tears that have been locked up, pervaded through the years, now fall unbidden and laded with sadness seep into my shirtsleeve, each drop expanding as they’re soaked up.

Her pain was discernible to most but to me it wailed like a beacon. My questions were asked not looking for answers, but to help her face what she was hiding. She told me, profuse misery mocking her words it hurt to cry. But I’ll say, as true as that statement may be, so is this: If you spend years upon years eating your pain, covering it in a shallow grave, the pain you grieve later is pallid to the compounded hurt you bury. I tell her this, whispering it softly in her ear as an inordinate amount of despair overflows.

She tightened her grip around me and I hope she realizes the truth in my words. And in the moment I see, even if before it was palpable, how scared she actually was, how small she appeared as for the first time she ventured from her inner dungeon-keep. I allow her to rant her words of self loathing before I counter act them. Looking in her eyes, I delete fallen tears and tell her; with as obstinate as she may be, she has potency inside her, if only she believed it to be there.

She smiled sadly, more pained trails sliding down her cheeks. I lay a kiss upon her hand and squeeze it gently, offering her silent comfort and unspoken promises. She folds herself to me, lapping up my support like a beggar scuffs food and water. I tell her its okay, seeing her eyes pool in the moon light and she’s in my arms again. I tell her I got her and its okay to let go, and as the tears fall in unison with the walls around her heart, she learns what it means that not everyone will let you down.