She stacks them up,
From the bottom,
To the very top;
Each layer adding weight,
To the increasingly precarious tower.

When it comes tumbling down,
She is very nearly on her way out,
The lights dimmed,
And the silence around
Is deafeningly loud;
It is just as she had known it would be,
The unsettlingly eerie quiet
Before the crash of the storm.

She casts a final glance
At the broken remnants
Of her ungainly tower,
A multitude of layers,
Painstakingly gathered,
Over a handful of decades,
Each one hurt as much or worse
Than its neighbours.

Never gather them
Had been the refrain,
That she had ignored
Again and again,
And now the burden
Of this enormous tower,
Crushes her spirits
That give out in a breath,
Drawn one last time,
From beneath a mound
Of lifelong regrets.