For Her, from Her

I know your tired. Not the kind that sleep fixes— the kind that lives in your jaw and your shoulders and the small muscles around your eyes that tighten every time someone needs something and you say yes before you've checked whether you had anything left to give. I know because I do it too. We were taught to be strong by women who were never allowed to be tired. We inherited their posture without inheriting their permission to rest. So here is mine to you: You are allowed to cancel the thing. You are allowed to close the door and sit in the bath until the water is no longer warm and you are no longer performing. You are allowed to say: not today. Not today is a complete sentence. I see the version of you that nobody sees— the one at the end of the day when the earrings come off and the voice goes quiet and you stare at the wall for a minute before remembering that tomorrow is already happening. That version is not broken. That version is the real one. And she deserves a poem that doesn't ask her to be anything other than exactly this: tired, beautiful, still here, still trying, still worth every gentle thing the world keeps forgetting to offer.