What would she say if she wasn’t trying to be strong?
Some days grief moves quietly. Other days it presses, sharp and insistent.

The memory from that one November lingers like a thorn beneath the skin. Something small, swallowed whole, changed the weight of everything that followed. It decided a life that gets to stay or one forced to go.

She moves now with an altered sense of heed, as if walking through a bed of thorns. Every step reminds her how close pain waits beneath the surface.

So she builds something protective. A barrier of spikes, sharp enough to keep the world a careful distance away. It is easier this way. Safer.

Still, she marvels at what it might feel like to let the armor down. To let someone see what rests beneath its spike. Connection is something she longs for, even as she guards against it. Protected, yet confined by the very thing meant to shield her.

I am carrying a bag of bricks, but I tell them it’s feathers.