Between Surrender & Return

This is Grit

There are words I will not write here.
They already take up too much space 
in my cabinets, in my calendar,
in the silence between one breath and the next.

So instead, I’ll tell you how it shows up.

Mornings are measured in what I swallow,
a row of tiny soldiers lined across the counter.
Afternoons slip away in erased plans,
in messages that begin with 
I’m sorry, 
I can’t.
Nights stretch too long,
my body bargaining for rest
while my mind recites all the ways 
I’ve already fallen short.

You don’t need me to name it.
You’d recognize it anyway, 
in the pause before I answer a simple question,
in the half-smile I offer 
when I decline an invitation,
in the fatigue stitched into every yes 
I still try to give.

Some days, I want to set it all down.
To let the bottles gather dust,
to silence the alarms,
to walk away from the rituals
that keep me tethered.
I wonder what it would feel like
to stop carrying this weight.

But then -

my daughter asks why the sky looks different 
at night,
and I want to be the one who tells her.
My partner’s hand finds mine across the couch,
quiet, steady, wordless,
and I remember there are promises we’ve kept through fire.
A friend sends a single text - thinking of you -
and it lands like a lifeline in the middle of my undoing.

This is not hope.
Hope feels too bright, too polished.
This is grit.

It’s staying when leaving whispers like relief.
It’s showing up, again,
for the people who tether me here,
and for the version of myself who still believes in them.

I live in the fracture
between surrender and return,
between what I can endure
and what I cannot escape.

And maybe survival isn’t about courage,
or faith,
or even wanting to be here.
Maybe it’s this:

the refusal to disappear.

The insistence on one more inhale,
one more exhale -

for her,
for him,
for them,
for me.

Again,
and again,
and again.