A Blue Rough Road

Make me stay for years, then.

Tell me there is another paper to wait for,

another door that will not open

until I have learned to wait quietly.

Why can't one be enough?

Why two?

Why must there always be three?

We already have too many copies of the same person.

And still, you ask for another.

But you told them the same thing.

Does waiting make me good?

Is that what you want to see?

That is how the world works, you say.

And you must learn to work with it.

But what if I refuse?

What if I question the road

while everyone else is busy walking?

Nobody needs your questions.

The world has enough mouths, you say.

What it needs is people

who stay quiet and agree.

So yes, I will obey.

But tell me,

when obedience has eaten all my hours,

when my hands have forgotten

the things they once dreamed of making,

when my voice fits so neatly into your silence

that even I can no longer hear it,

what will remain of me?

What will you call my life

when every choice was made by someone else?

Look at the road.

It is narrow,

worn down by the feet of people

who came before me.

Their faces are tired.

Some still carry dreams folded in their pockets.

Others have forgotten they ever had any.

We walk in a long, quiet line,

each of us following the back

of someone who is following another.

Nobody knows where the road ends.

Above us, someone keeps changing the rules.

Behind us, there is no way back.

Ahead, the road bends again.

And we keep going.

Sometimes the wind changes direction,

and for a moment

I feel something inside me turn.

Something small inside me refuses to stay quiet.

It asks me a question

I have spent my whole life avoiding:

If this road was drawn by someone else,

why must I spend my life

proving I can walk it?

And if I have never been allowed to choose

where my feet should carry me,

how can you call this life mine?