THE
CLENCHED
JAW

who cannot remember the last time their teeth were not touching.

Not because they are angry.

Sometimes nothing is wrong at all. The groceries are put away. The door is locked. Everyone is home.

And still—
the jaw holds.

There were other women.

A grandmother washing dishes while everyone else went to bed.

A mother going quiet in the passenger seat.

Women who knew how to make a little money stretch.

How to keep children calm. How to swallow the sentence that would make everything worse.

Nobody called it survival.
It was just what you did.

Nothing happens.

That's the strange part.

The room stays quiet. Nobody is angry. Nobody needs managing. Nobody's footsteps change the weather.

And the body—
still waits.

Not because she needs to become somebody else.

Maybe she has spent enough of her life doing that already.

Maybe she would simply like to know what it feels like to stop preparing for something that isn't coming.