barely above a whisper

Photo by Alexey Demidov on Pexels

with the gravest eyes
and the sweatiest of palms,
and with a trembling voice,
held barely above a whisper,
she said, well, I’m afraid
to go out there and live life again…
the life, she said, that chewed me up
and spit me out, the life I was supposed
to conquer as the sort of normal hero
of this transcendent familial narrative,
but now, she felt more like a casualty,
buried here, she said, stuck inside
these walls, dug in deeper…