Another gust hits my face,
like weather that just learned my name.
Air sharp, penetrating, waking my bones.
This breeze makes breathing difficult,
but I open my mouth to speak anyway.
I speak for the silenced,
for those who swallowed their words,
for sentences that never make it
past locked doors and untold meetings.
The urge to speak is a drum
that never sleeps.
It pounds behind my ribs
until silence feels like surrender.
They say they speak for them.
They stand at podiums,
stack papers like shields,
translate lives into bullet points.
They number people who have lives.
They label souls as diagnoses.
The echo sounds wrong,
like reading a heartbeat from a spreadsheet.
I am tired,
tired in the marrow,
tired in the corners of hope
where doubt waits patiently.
Still, I refuse the quiet.
Somewhere,
a voice knocks on bone,
screams through skin,
waits for an opening.
So I open,
again,
and again,
and again,
until the wind changes direction