Borrowed Cart

She pushes her borrowed cart forward, day’s weight  

pressed into the creak of metal and wheel.  

Bent spine whispers the burden she carries,  

leaning like dusk against her heavy things.  

Her lips weave silent conversations, shapeless,  

a hymn only the wind might understand.  

She shuffles a rhythm too slow for the world,  

a two-step meant for surviving, not grace.  

Eyes slide away from her fragile orbit,  

passersby building walls of brief distraction.  

The space she occupies is a thin reminder,  

a mirror showing us where we won’t go.  

There’s a trembling dignity in her march,  

a resolve stitched into her bag-worn hands.  

Not all that is stripped away can be lost.  

The ground catches the fallen and calls it home.