Poems About a Beautiful Woman

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.

I know your name but not the one on your driver's license. The one that only exists when it's 2 a.m. and you can't sleep and the mask you wear for the world is on the nightstand next to your phone. That's the person I'm writing this for. Not the one who says I'm fine with a smile that could win awards. Not the one who holds it together in the meeting and the school pickup and the dinner and the dishes and the bedtime story and the lock-checking and the lying-down that isn't sleep but performance. I'm writing this for the woman who cries in the shower because it's the only room with a lock and running water that sounds like nothing. You are not falling apart. You are a house that has held everyone for so long that nobody thought to ask whether the foundation needed anything. I see you. I see the grocery list that is actually a prayer. I see the calendar that is actually a cage. I see the smile that is actually a door you close so gently that nobody hears the lock. This poem is not advice. This poem is not a solution. This poem is someone finally saying: You are doing an impossible thing. And the fact that you are still doing it is not ordinary. It is the bravest thing I've ever seen and I wanted you to know that someone noticed.

The moon has heard every confession ever whispered from a bedroom window. Every I love you said to a sky that wasn't listening. Every promise made at midnight to a person who was already asleep. The moon doesn't judge. This is what makes it better company than most people. I used to think the moon was romantic. All those poems, all those songs, all those lovers pointing upward and saying: we're both looking at the same moon. But the moon is not romantic. The moon is honest. It shows you exactly how much light it has— which is none. It's all borrowed. And maybe that's the most beautiful thing: something that has no light of its own but still manages to illuminate an entire night. Sounds like everyone I've ever loved. The moon waxes. The moon wanes. It disappears entirely and people panic for a second before remembering that this is what the moon does: it comes back. Always. Every time. Without fail. Without being asked. I want to love like the moon loves the dark— not by fighting it, not by replacing it, but by showing up with whatever light I've managed to borrow and letting that be enough.