I tell you

What if this is all I have left?

I don't even know where I'm going 

Cannot remember where I've been

What if this is all I get?

My lot in life is just this?

Dare I ask for more?

Am I made for more?

Can I not stretch for a morsel more?

Would I ask for what I cannot carry?

If all I know is denial and the absence of having, why is it that I ask for more if I am not worthy?

Would a curious mind be denied what is not possible?

Such limitation, stifling, yet they walk on my neck as I cry out for more from this life.

They take, yet I have so little. And for what?

To stand taller. To have backs so erect, their hubris draws their strings like a renowned puppeteer.

A tangled web woven around someone as lowly as I

Why? 

Why is it that my heart calls for an abundance that is non-existent for me? As cruel a fate as that of Job.

Silence fell upon me, and my lips melded shut. I'd said too much this time. I felt the sand settle from the line my words had drawn. 

Dare you believe that the tide of fate does not turn?

Are you so special that the law somehow stops for you?

As though your suffering is meaningless

You don't know what your suffering means to me

What those cries left me with

How I was changed under the weight of your torment

Selfish of you to believe you suffer alone

That those on your neck shall never remember their weight and how you eased it

They stood on you so you remember the weakness under their feet. You know them in a way that their shadow does. A weight known only by the grace of the concrete I gave them. The very soil underneath feet that they have grace to stand within. Yet you think the silt doesn't remember? You believe that every cackle landed with a burning malice in a forgetful atmosphere? Your pain doesn't belong to just you. None of it is just yours. When Mother Nature was subjected to the nature of humans falling upon her, did you cry then? The cackles of those who stepped on you shall turn into gasps when they see who you truly are. Your abundance is beyond what you can carry, so you shall be strengthened under the weight of those who seek to trample you. Your cries have landed on the same air they'll seek in their breathlessness. Those same feet will seek the sanctity of your rise. Do you not see?

With a deep inhale, I awaited my fate. Humbled as I was, I knew, with the utmost certainty, I had truly been seen. In solace, I understood and held my tongue further.