Bone Cracked Weight

A bad autoimmune flare-up doesn’t just happen...

 

it invades...

It seeps into bone and muscle,

camping out in the hollows

and daring me to push it away.

The pain isn’t loud at first; it’s patient...

stripping away movement one stolen motion at a time

until the world feels heavier, thicker, slower.

My skin feels too thin for my bones,

my blood too heavy for my veins.

It’s waking already defeated

but still forcing myself into the day

because the world demands the joy I’ve always carried.

Joy has become my armor.

I smile through gritted teeth.

I stand when my knees threaten to buckle.

I speak light into rooms

even when my voice scrapes raw against my ribs.

People see strength in that.... they always have.

What they don’t see is the cost:

how broken and tired I am beneath it all.

How I sometimes wish someone would just take the weight,

pamper me without me asking,

wrap me in warmth and say, “You can rest now, I’ve got you.”

But I don’t ask.

Not because I don’t need it 

but because I’ve never been built to beg.

Flare-ups feel like pulling a river through the finest cracks in stone 

slow, relentless, reshaping me with each pass.

My spine hums with a deep ache.

My muscles burn out before they can hold me.

And still,  I move.

Still, I give.

I pour tea for others

while my own cup stays bone dry empty.

I’ve built a life on being the pillar,

the one who steadies the ground for everyone else 

and I’ve done it so well

that no one stops to wonder if my foundation is fracturing.

Like a mountain that looks ready to cave under its own weight,

the shell stays unbroken

even as the fault lines deepen.

Inside, I linger...

hoping for a filling that seeps into the cracks,

softness that takes root, seeds, and spreads

until it holds me the way I’ve held others.

Hope clings to me like moss to stone..

delicate to the eye,

stubborn enough to survive storms.

That’s what keeps me upright

when my soul is already rubble in disguise.

In those moments,

I am the last standing pillar...

but only barely.

And if you call yourself my friend,

I need you to notice what I will never say.

I need you to see the shift in my tone,

hear the weight between my silences,

and feel the truth I keep buried under “I’m fine.”

I need you to figure it out

without forcing me to speak it 

that I need help,

emotionally, mentally, financially...

so I can fully recover.

That even the strongest pillars deserve to rest.

That even the unshakable ones sometimes need to be held.

Until then,
I will keep standing, stubborn as stone..
the cracks widening,
waiting for someone willing to fill them
with something softer than this world has ever offered me.