What Doesn't Kill You

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

But what if I don’t want to be stronger?

What if stronger sounds
impenetrable
independent
intact

What if I want the hard things in life
to make me soft

What if I want to be softened
to the heartache of others
and to the needs of my own soul

What if I don’t want to pull myself together
but let myself fall apart

What if I want to be broken into a million pieces
so I can be put back together in a way that feels
more like me
than any previous version

and in the search for what that looks like—
the journey of self-discovery—
I will find that I was right to keep myself
soft.