The Second Straw
The Second Straw
The moment that breaks the camel isn’t enough.
Two straws are needed.
Eons stretch while waiting
as one sun dips into another moon
and the weather changes.
There isn’t a single hope.
Just the knowing people lose their humanness.
Even now? Love is the small evidence:
a hand beneath, cradling a head
just before the skull strikes the floor,
the sentence someone keeps in a closed mouth
because saying it bothers
—even saying it carefully,
a child asleep upon a shoulder,
not yet given a thousand permissions
by which adults injure each other.
You love what passes between people
more than the people themselves—
the cup of water,
the coat held open,
the five honest words
that alter an unbearable day.
Who could spend an entire life
protecting such things?
That’s the difficulty.
That’s the difficulty.
Some creatures survive
by presenting less of themselves.
Certain seeds remain closed
through years of favorable weather,
waiting for fire.
A wounded animal sometimes travels
far beyond the herd
before lying down.
There are flowers that fold
at the pressure of a fingertip
and remain folded
long after the hand is gone.
None of this cancels tenderness.
Water still gathers
in the smallest hollow.
A bird with one good wing
still covers its young.
But every living thing
has some knowledge
of when nearness becomes danger,
when shelter becomes exposure,
when the kindest last act
is to leave no soft part
within reach.
Elsewhere, smaller things endure:
one perfect sentence,
a room without rules,
distant laughter arriving
through somebody’s wall,
the warmth left in fabric
after a decent body rises.
Sometimes that is enough.
Then comes the second straw.
Nothing remarkable in itself.
A dry length of grass,
almost without weight,
until the spine knows.
Not cruelty—
that knowledge is ancient.
Something smaller.
How little weight
is required
once enough has already been carried.
The camel does not collapse.
That would be easier.
The knees straighten.
The load slides sideways.
And across the ground
lie all the things
once mistaken
for belonging.
Marni Fraser
0808|2026
[X:XXII PM]
Photo Marni Fraser | 2026
