Soft things don't break.

My grandmother grew a lemon tree in her garden.
Planted inside a beautiful, big terracotta pot she had brought from Sicily;
it reminded her of home.
On sunny days I could hear her outside, singing to the tree, misting its leaves.

I found the pot in the driveway one day.
A stack of sharp edges, uneven pieces.
The broom resting next to it, against the wall.

’Hard things break’, my grandmother said with a sigh.

Decades later, I wonder if she was talking about her pot or about herself?

Hard things break under pressure.
They look like they can withstand the storm
but what if they tumble over?
What if they get hit?
Hard things break when they fall to the ground,
on impact, they shatter into pieces.

Soft things don’t break.
They can bend and bruise.
They can loose their shape.
Soft things can stretch and expand.
They can look different after.

But soft things cannot break.

A second version I wrote after publishing this one: