I used to look up to success.
Glossy and distant,
like yachts pulling into sunlit harbors.
While my brothers and I posed,
thinking cool was something you wore.
A picture snapped becomes a prophecy
one we’re sold before we understand
we're being trained to consume.
We watched the boats drift in
like kings returning from invisible wars.
And my brother,
bold, naïve, beautiful,
pointed and said,
“I’ll have one of those.”
When asked how he’d pay,
he simply explained:
“I’ll get it from that wall, just like you do.”
God, the way children believe -
no fear in their hunger,
no shame in their dreams.
Maybe I’m just older now,
my lenses fogged from wear.
But all I see is people
wrapped in things
not selves, not stories,
but trinkets, masks, trophies.
Like they forgot that real wealth
was once built on time,
on tending soil,
on tears held back
while saying goodbye.
Maybe I’m not better.
Just tired of pretending.
Fifteen years I spent hiding,
living so cautiously
I might as well
not have lived at all.
I thought if I became invisible enough,
it wouldn’t hurt when no one looked.
But now I see it:
No one's looking.
Not really.
They’re caught in the hum -
faces lit by screens,
minds dragged along
by headlines, algorithms,
urgencies that mean nothing
when the world goes quiet.
And I don’t want to be them.
I never was.
So what was I hiding from?
Not them.
Maybe just from the part of me
that believed I had to earn belonging,
to twist myself into shapes
too small to hold a soul.
I always tell myself I'm a people-pleaser,
a labrador in a crowd,
always wagging, always watching.
But maybe I just wanted connection.
Maybe I was trying to make sure
everyone on the bus had a seat.
And maybe
that’s not so bad.
I no longer look up to success.
I look for faces in the street
at how someone treats the waiter,
the ******* crying on the curb,
the man with cardboard for shoes.
We are all human.
All breakable.
All still learning
how to love
without masks.
And I want to shout it,
before greed drowns our voices,
before we forget
how to hold one another
without asking what they own.
