"There's always tomorrow," he says,

The words are simple - nonchalant,
The text sent without a second thought given,
To the pain they would cause her heart.
She expected those words, or something similar,
But it doesn't numb the dull ache that grows,
As seconds pass to minutes pass to hours,
And she sits - alone.

A girl alone with her thoughts is a dangerous thing,
As she thinks,
When will she be able to take the kid gloves off that have grown so tight on her palms that they mimic the lines of her knuckles.
When will she be able to crack open the lock box where she keeps her feelings hidden and let them tumble out.
Big; ugly; beautiful; mysterious;
Wishing she could wear her ins and outs on her sleeve like he does.

But when she tries, she's met with resistance.
The first time she expected understanding,
The second, she hoped for patience,
And by the third time, she had learned her lesson, realized her mistake.
That's when she reached deep inside of herself,
Grasping onto her reality - and stopped sharing.
She didn't stop talking all together - she just stopped talking about the things that mattered.
She silenced her passions and worries; hopes and dreams.
She learned to ignore the irresistible pull to share her excitement and mastered the art of burying her anxieties so deep within herself, that they manifested themselves in her fingers and toes, packed so tightly that they kept her warm in the darkest of nights.
She had lived like this for so long that she had even forgotten that her opinions could carry any weight.

But those three words, "There's always tomorrow,"
Reawakened a fire inside of her that she never should have let anybody take away.
She was beaten and exhausted, tired of feeling like her words were a necessary evil to be put up with.
Tired of being someone who was expected to be seen but not heard.
Tired of being taken for granted.

Only she was timid and weak,
Raised to be a woman of passion but not of pain, a woman who was taught love and not heartbreak, a woman who knew nothing of the storm she felt brewing.
She knew only that she wouldn't speak of these dark shadows within.
She would only sit and wait.
Wait.
For the last straw.
Wait.
For the last droplet of water that would finally break the dam.
Wondering all the while, when she would lose grip on the locked box,
And when the words "there's always tomorrow"
Would no longer be true.