The weight that lands, uninvited on too small shoulders. We consider it a rite, our gift to the innocent. So that they might absorb the relative and the ruthless that long preceded their arrival.
Big feelings roil deep in little bodies. How good we are at feeling them, then. The tears flow swiftly and the chest heaves, as if to cleave the weight entirely. A momentary reprieve from all that we do not yet know how to hold.
Long since desensitized to this burden of living, we respond only in shushes or shoos. Then one day, we start responding not at all. As our parents before us.
We don’t know where the feelings go — over time calcifying within. And instead of releasing that which was never ours to carry.
Resistance builds, and still we blame the other — as if such blame could lighten the load. An illusion of control, and the closest thing to safety we’ll ever get.
-June
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