From the outside
looking at my country

do not laugh
do not mock
do not decry this
as the collective scream

of a nation gone mad

understand that
this is not a choice born of madness

but rather
this is a choice born of desperation

a cry

of every mother who can't feed her children
of every father working multiple jobs, just to provide
of every child born into a suffering they will never rise from
of every person who has to beg on the streets

hoping, begging for things to change