Breakable

sometimes i think that i might have used up all my strength as a child.  this grown up that i am doesn't feel as strong as she once did.  it's as if my skin has been removed and i walk around in my broken bones.  i rattle like an old man.  i carry my heart outside of me like a purse.  filled with lost things. i bend and creak like a door. the chill in me.. a ghost passing through a sunny room.  

i saved my vulnerability up like nickels to spend later.  and now i cry too easy.  a small connection with a stranger.. a god bless you after a sneeze.. a door held open..  two parents holding the hands of a child between them..  and it starts, that one never ending tear that pours in slow motion out of the corner of my left eye.  a strange tear that makes a beeline down my face and falls like a thin river onto my collarbone.  a collarbone once broken as a three year old.  

i remember falling off the see saw and quickly pretending nothing was wrong, not wanting to worry my parents. already in me was the fear of being a burden, of being pitied. or weak. it wasn't discovered to be broken until, weeks later, at my monthly chemo treatments the doctor noticed that i wasn't using my arm.  an x-ray was taken and as it turns out, i had broken my collarbone!  as an adult i have made trips to the emergency room because i was "nervous."  times have changed.   

perhaps this is what happens to us as we get older.  the world begins to look very fragile and beautiful, glass.  we see through it..  the break-ability of it all.  it's scary, this lovely breakable world.