Chairs creak, restless and stiff,
old man in tweed mutters prayers, beads clicking
against rough fingers—years worn thin by faith.
A mother huddles over a sick child,
eyes glassy with sleepless nights,
while a girl with earbuds hums to the silent tune
of time dragging its feet.
The posters speak of health,
but the air breathes sickness,
not just of flesh but something
deeper—quiet hurts unseen.
The accents clash, yet here, words are few,
fingers flick at phones, eyes fix
on nothing, everyone lost in private wars.
A worker with calloused hands
clutches his knee, torn, betrayed by years
of backbreaking days,
while the woman beside him, face sharp,
shakes her head at the news on TV—politics,
yet no argument passes her lips today.
What’s left to fight for?
Here, they share the same hunger—
not for victory, but for relief.
Old or young, black or white,
voices bent with every tongue—
success doesn’t linger in this room.
Yet the pains, though varied, ring the same—
swallowed in sighs, woven through coughs,
woven through time itself.
The child’s eyes catch the old man’s,
a fleeting glance across the gulf,
and for a moment,
they both know what the other carries,
what we all carry,
heavy as breath and fleeting as a name
called through the door.
