the noise, the contradiction, the suffering, the sadness…

our ancestors tried so hard to protect us from all the things that may hurt us in this world...
they learned how to mix cement, burn bridges, and build walls…
until building walls, cementing resentment, and burning people and pasts were all they’ve ever known…
they’ve been so preoccupied with mastering how to make the strongest foundations and columns
that a labyrinth of walls and isolation was all they’ve achieved in their attempts of trial and error…
the labyrinth became so big, it stretched to cover the outside, too…

And now, the noise, the contradiction, the suffering, the sadness—
they seep from the walls themselves, thickened with anger, sharpened with frustration,
drenched in apathy, twisted with hollow apologies.
At first, they were just sounds, bouncing off the walls,
detached, unshaped, incomprehensible.
But time sharpens everything.
And as the days stretch into years,
those echoes carve through the silence with clarity.
The words find me.
They seep into me, thread themselves into the cracks of my skin until they are no longer echoes.

They are me.

Time does not heal all wounds.

Sometimes, it presses you deeper into the soil,
where the weight of dirt and grief presses harder against your chest.
The longer you stay marinated in the bitterness of your inheritance,
the deeper you dig into the grave your ancestors left for you.
Until the day you wake and realize—
you never built walls to keep the world out.

You built walls to keep yourself in.