Once in a world both cruel and tight,
where men and women lost their light,
they bowed, they bent, they served, they knelt,
they swallowed pain they never spelt.
The Oppression
A hand, a lash, a word, a chain,
a whispered threat, a silent bane.
They learned to smile with hollow grace,
to mask the fear upon their face.
They stitched their tongues, they stilled their cries,
they wore their roles like dead men’s ties.
To please, to yield, to scrape, to fade
to be the thing that others made.
Yet deep inside, where darkness crept,
where shattered dreams and sorrows wept,
a voice as small as dust and bone
began to hum, began to groan.
A sound so thin, so soft, so weak,
it dared to rise, it dared to speak.
Not in anger, not in spite,
but in a whisper edged with light.
It said, “Oh yes, I bowed, I broke,
I choked on words I never spoke.
I bore their chains, I played their part,
but now, I know, I have a heart.”
And one by one, they stood, they rose,
with weary eyes and tattered clothes.
No longer bound by fate or shame,
no longer pawns in someone’s game.
Yet, in their rise, they saw it clear
the ones who bent them lived in fear.
For power stolen, power fed,
is power brittle, filled with dread.
And in that moment, they could see,
that to be strong is to be free.
Not to return the lash, the chain,
not to inflict another’s pain.
But to stand, unshaken, true,
to be the thing they always knew.
And so they left the halls of night,
to bathe their souls in rising light.
For in the breaking of the heart,
we find the whole, the light, the start.
And in the shadow’s cold embrace,
we learn the truth, we know our place.
The moral, clear, as a whisper still,
Power’s not in break nor kill.
Not in chains, nor rule, nor throne,
Power’s knowing you are your own.
