Strong

You can’t promise your heart to anything

I’ve tried. It refuses to be bartered

And your eyes, they don’t belong to you

They’ll go on seeing in spite of you

Your actions, even, are a conversation—sometimes a screaming fight—with this world. You are at most half of the dialog

But you can take a vow of strength

I know because I promised to be strong

Before I was strong enough to know the cost of such a vow

Before I can remember

Perhaps before even taking a breath

I promised to run barefoot over the limestone of that long driveway and never show on my face the bruising of my feet

I promised to feel my anger like lightening, no matter how deep I had to bury it

I promised to swallow loneliness whole like a fish and never ask for love until it’s offered

I promised to never leave, even if in the end, there’s nothing left of me to stay

I promised that the only tear you’ll ever see on my face will fall silent and heavy as the world is heavy

I made an unconditional promise to live. And even when I balanced on the precipice of dying i never dreamed of giving up

The only vows you never break are the ones you didn’t make, because they made you. And you don’t know how to take yourself back

So instead, I had to learn new ways of being strong

It takes strength stop when you can’t keep going

It takes strength to ask for love when love is a conversation of which you make only half

It takes strength to leave when staying is killing you

You have to be strong to hold the weakness you’re pregnant with

It’s strong not to leave any of you behind