Portrait of the Woman Who Cared

You’re careful with our fragile shards.

Your mental buffet rising high,

full of all the china parts of us

we trust you with.

Red and blue flowers blooming

against white kaolin bowls

and silver metal spoons

glittering with the fire of emotions

we keep hidden inside ourselves.

You keep our fragile parts

locked away

inside your brain,

no one else allowed to touch them

but you.

Your wooden doors creak open

whenever you need to store our fragile shards away,

refer back to them later

when you need to.

You’ll notice we’re either

blossoming or burning

and you take either one

with open hands.

Open your drawers,

“say welcome!

Have a seat!

Make yourself comfortable.”

We’ll sit on the nearby couch

as you sift through our brains,

asking all the right questions,

looking for our shards

to carry on your back.

To add to your wooden buffet

that creaks every time you move a door

or drawer

or handle,

it’s that old.

Passed down to you from your mother,

your caring nature never ceases

to be the fire in our darkness.

The flowers on our doorstep

when we weren’t expecting any,

holding a little note within its pedals

that says “keep going,

I believe in you.”

You’ll sit and listen to every story

behind every broken glass bottle,

every empty bowl,

every fragile shard.

You’ll take them in like a vacuum

sucking every little particle of dust

until there is nothing left anymore.

Until the laughs have been let out

like wild beasts in the night.

Until the tears have streamed

like the rivers you pass

on your way to work.

Until the smiles have shown so bright

the lightbulbs need changing

due to overexposure.

When all that needs to be said

has been thrown into your universe,

you carefully pick up each shard,

every story,

each word,

place it carefully inside a section

of your wooden buffet,

smile

and say “thank you for trusting me.”

We’ll reply back “thank you for listening.”