Free Verse · Love
The Load-Bearing Years
The first year gets champagne.
The fiftieth gets gold.
But these — the middle years,
the school-run, leaky-faucet,
fall-asleep-mid-movie years —
these are the load-bearing ones.
No one applauds them.
So I will: to you, to us,
to every unphotographed day
we chose this. And chose it again.
Original poem © QuillOak — free for personal use.
“The Load-Bearing Years” by The QuillOak Editors — quilloak.com/poems/the-load-bearing-years
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