(and be aware, that this is a preview)
1. They hungered always
(1) In the land of plenty, they starved. (2) Their bellies were full,
but their hearts were gaunt. (3) They built towers that scraped the
heavens, and still reached higher. (4) They owned lands they never
touched, and waters they never drank, and skies they never looked
up to. (5) A man woke before dawn and slept long after the moon’s
rise, chasing coins that slipped always just ahead. (6) He missed
his son’s first words, and his daughter’s last poem. (7) But they
praised him, for he was successful. (8) And a woman bent her back
beneath the weight of endless striving. (9) She gave all, and then
more, and then more again. (10) And when she broke, they called
her weak. (11) A child was given gifts each day, and each day they
grew more hollow. (12) He forgot how to wonder, for all had been
handed without question. (13) And his laughter dried up like a
stream swallowed by concrete. (14) In the cities, they fed their souls
with flashing lights and empty scrolls. (15) They envied without
knowing why. (16) They desired things only because others desired
them. (17) They sold hours of their lives for objects they did not
need. (18) And the things they bought mocked them with silence.
(19) Their homes grew larger, their tables heavier, their eyes duller.
(20) They sought meaning in brands, and purpose in promotions.
(21) And when they reached the top, they found nothing there but a
view of others still climbing. (22) And they could not stop. (23) For
they had forgotten what it meant to rest. (24) What it meant to be.
(25) And so they ran, forever chasing shadows on water. (26) They
called it ambition. (27) while the hunger was never filled.
9. Of the Bodies That Were Never Trusted, (1) The human
body was once a compass. (2) It spoke in pulse. In ache. In heat.
(3) But it was taught to distrust itself. (4) To fear its hunger.
(5)To question its pain. (6) Boys were taught to silence their tears.
(7) Girls were taught their bodies were dangerous. (8) Others were
not given words for what they were — just shame. (9) Desire was
called sin. (10) Fat was called failure. (11) Pleasure was called
weakness. (12) Pain was called imaginary. (13) They were told to
sit still. (14) To shrink. (15) To toughen up. (16) To numb out. (17)
And so they learned to abandon the body. (18) To float above it. (19)
To override every signal with productivity, with pills, with pretend-
ing. (20) Illness was seen as betrayal. (21) Disability as burden. (22)
Aging as decline. (23) Menstruation as filth. (24) They were taught
to fix the body, but never to listen to it. (25) To sculpt it, stretch
it, starve it, surgically punish it — but never sit within it as home.
(26) And when the body screamed — (27) in panic, in collapse, in
autoimmune revolt — they said, “You’re overreacting.” (28) But
the body does not lie. (29) It does not care about performance. (30)
It remembers everything. (31) Every touch, (32) Every bruise, (33)
Every time it was ignored in favor of being accepted. (34) And one
day, it stops asking for attention. (35) It simply shuts down. (36)
And the human says, “What’s wrong with me?” (37) Not knowing
the answer was spoken long ago — in fatigue, in tremble, in ache.
15. And they did not know how to Be, (1) There was a wom-
an who stood before a mirror every day, (2) but she did not know
who she was. (3) She wore masks woven from expectations, (4)
And each day, she picked one for the world to see. (5) She smiled
when she was sad, (6) laughed when her heart was heavy, (7) and
hid her tears behind painted eyes. (8) She had forgotten what it was
like to be still, (9) To be without performance. (10) And there was
a man who worked his hands to the bone, (11) And yet, when he
slept, he dreamed of his own exhaustion. (12) He worked because
it was the only way to feel alive, (13) But every day he felt more
empty. (14) He forgot the taste of rest, (15) And his soul withered
like a plant with no sun. (16) And the children, born into a world of
do, (17) Were taught that the worth of a person could be measured
in minutes and hours, (18) That to be was not enough, (19) That
they must always be becoming something else. (20) They were not
taught to feel, (21) But to perform, (22) To achieve, (23) To climb
ever higher, (24) Until their hands bled, (25) Until they forgot the
stars above, (26) Until the earth beneath their feet felt foreign.
16. And They Were Not Seen, (1) And there was a child
who screamed each night in his room. (2) His cries were not heard,
for his mother wept into a bottle, and his father raged into walls.
(3) He learned that pain unacknowledged folds inward like iron.
(4) He learned to speak with silence, and to look away when others
suffered. (5) And a girl was born beautiful, but her beauty became
her prison. (6) Men spoke to her skin and not to her soul, and she
became a mirror of what they desired. (7) When she cried, they
called it poetry. (8) When she broke, they called it madness. (9)
And no one asked who she was before they named her. (10) And
there was an old man who had labored his whole life. (11) His back
bore the weight of generations, but in the end, his name was not
remembered. (12) He died in a room filled with flickering light and
no one at his side. (13) They buried him with a number, not a name.
(14) And the earth did not speak of him again. (15) And in the cities,
people passed one another without eyes. (16) They touched glass
more than they touched each other. (17) They smiled in reflections
and cried in silence. (18) No one knew who among them was dying.
(19) No one asked. (20) And the soul of man was like a garden for-
gotten — (21) The gates rusted shut, the roots grown wild, the fruit
fallen and rotting. (22) And when they looked inward, they found
only echoes. (23) They called it normal. (24) They called it modern.
(25) They called it life.
17. Of the Emotions that had no Names, (1) There were
feelings that lived without language. (2) Not joy. Not rage. Not sor-
row. (3) Something in between. (4) Something ancient, (5) like the
first breath of a child who isn’t yet sure they want to live. (6) They
felt too much, too intricately. (7) So the world reduced them. (8)
“Are you sad?” (9) “Are you mad?” (10) And when they couldn’t
answer, (11) they were told to be quiet. (12) They were told to be normal.
(13) But their grief was not grief. (14) It was nostalgia for
something that never happened. (15) Their love was not Love. (16)
It was an ache for a home that had no place. (17) Their rage was not
fury. (18) It was an earthquake in the chest that made no sound. (19)
And since there were no words, (20) they said nothing. (21) And
since they said nothing, (22) the world believed they felt nothing.
18. Of the Memory That was taught to Forget, (1) They
called it moving on. (2) They called it strength. (3) But it was amne-
sia. (4) A forgetting forced by survival. (5) A burial of pain beneath
performance. (6) They were told: “Don’t dwell.” (7) “Let go.” (8)
“Be grateful it wasn’t worse.” (9) As if gratitude and grief could
not hold hands. (10) As if healing required pretending. (11) They
erased what they could not explain. (12) They silenced what made
them flinch. (13) They paved over sacred sites of suffering (14) and
built cathedrals of denial. (15) The stories of the broken were left
untold — (16) not because they lacked meaning, (17) but because
they made power uncomfortable. (18) And what is not profitable
(19) is buried. (20) The child who cried too long was labeled dra-
matic. (21) The survivor who spoke too loud was called bitter. (22)
And the soul who remembered was told to “move forward.” (23)
But healing is not a straight line. (24) And time does not erase what
the body still carries. (25) The scream still lives in the throat. (26)
The tremble still lives in the hand. (27) The memory still lives in the
silence between words. (28) They learned to distrust their remem-
bering. (29) To doubt the dream. (30) To soften the story so others
would stay. (31) But the truth does not soften. (32) It only waits.
(33) And when the room is quiet enough, (34) it returns — (35) not
to haunt, (36) but to be witnessed. (37) Not to destroy, (38) but to
be honored. (39) For remembrance is not weakness. (40) It is resur-
rection.
29. Of the Labor that could never Rest, (1) The body was
never meant to be a Machine. (2) It was built to feel the wind, not the
clock. (3) But the bell rang. The shift began. (4) And the soul was
traded for productivity. (5) The child who once dreamed of stars be-
came a number in a ledger. (6) The artist who painted in silence was
told: “Monetize.” (7) The elder who once told stories now delivered
packages. (8) Time became currency. (9) Breath became burden.
(10) And rest — rest was criminal. (11) They said: “Grind harder.”
(12) They said: “Sleep is for the weak.” (13) But no one warned that
exhaustion would hollow the bones of entire generations. (14) Mus-
cles frayed under fluorescent lights. (15) Minds broke in endless
meetings. (16) Backs bent in warehouses where no sunlight entered.
(17) Farmers starved next to full grocery aisles. (18) Nurses wept in
stairwells between saving lives and being called expendable. (19)
The laborer was blamed for their poverty. (20) The unemployed,
for their despair. (21) The poor were punished with paperwork. (22)
The rich were praised for profit built on invisible hands. (23) Rest
became a protest. (24) Slowness became survival. (25) But most
could not afford either. (26) Because if they stopped — even for one
breath — the Machine would forget them. (27) Replace them. (28)
Move on without a pause. (29) And so they kept moving. (30) And
so they kept breaking. (31) Until even the dream of rest became
impossible to imagine. (32) The body kept going. (33) The soul sat
in a forgotten corner. (34) Unseen. (35) Unslept.
30. Of the Chain that could not be touched, (1) The debt
began before birth. (2) The child entered owing. (3) For air, for wa-
ter, for education, for simply existing in a world where everything
had been priced. (4) They were told to dream, and charged for it. (5)
They were told to rise, but weighed down with interest. (6) Their
youth was bought with loans. (7) Their futures sold to creditors.
(8) Debt became identity. (9) A number stitched to the back of the
mind. (10) A fear that followed even in sleep. (11) They borrowed
to stay alive. (12) They borrowed to learn. (13) They borrowed to
heal. (14) And the borrowing never stopped. (15) Those who lent
called it freedom. (16) Those who owed called it survival. (17) But
the numbers did not shrink. (18) They grew in shadow, like mold
in the corners of a home too poor to fix. (19) They worked to pay
it off. (20) But the wages were small. (21) The jobs were unstable.
(22) The system was rigged. (23) And still — the fees multiplied.
(24) And still — the debt collectors knocked. (25) And still — the
shame grew heavier. (26) Some died owing. (27) Some never lived
outside of owing. (28) And the world moved on — because debt
was normal now. (29) Suffering had become a subscription. (30)
They called it responsibility. (31) But it was captivity.
31. And They Could Not Rest, (1) In the age of ceaselessmotion,
stillness became a stranger. (2) A man woke before the sun
to chase coins he could never hold. (3) His eyes burned blue from
the glow of sleepless devices. (4) His meals were eaten standing,
his breath forgotten in the grind. (5) And when he lay in bed, his
mind raced through lists and debts and clocks. (6) There was no
silence left inside him, only noise that mimicked thought. (7) A
woman bore her burdens with a spine of fire. (8) She cared for her
children and her dying mother and the job that devoured her hours.
(9) But none cared for her. (10) When she cried in the kitchen, no
one came. (11) When she broke in the hallway, she kept walking.
(12) She dared not stop, for the world would forget her the moment
she sat down. (13) A boy was told to achieve. (14) Every mistake he
made was recorded, ranked, and compared. (15) His dreams were
scheduled into calendars, his joy measured in productivity. (16) He
learned to compete before he learned to feel. (17) And a girl, whose
heart beat with poetry, was told to be useful instead. (18) So she
pressed her art into spreadsheets and spreadsheets into her veins.
(19) And when she could no longer breathe, they told her to med-
itate before work. (20) In all the lands, rest was called laziness,
and weariness was a badge of honor. (21) They celebrated those
who broke themselves in pursuit of more. (22) And they pitied the
ones who sat beneath trees, who listened to rain, who moved slowly
through life. (23) The Sabbath had become myth, and peace was
only permitted after death. (24) And in this restless motion, they
forgot how to be. (25) They ran from grief, and so it chased them.
(26) They fled from stillness, and so it hollowed them. (27) And in
every trembling hand and sleepless night, the soul wept for silence.
(28) But there were no longer ears to hear it.
46. Of the Homes That Were Never Safe, (1) They called
it home. (2) But the walls held more fear than shelter. (3) Behind
closed doors, cruelty grew without witness. (4) And the rooms,
filled with silence, learned to echo screams. (5) A child flinched at
footsteps, (6) not because of noise, but memory. (7) A mother hid
bruises beneath long sleeves and long smiles. (8) A father wept in
secret, for his sorrow was forbidden. (9) The table, where bread
should be broken, (10) became a stage for judgment. (11) The bed,
where bodies should rest, (12) became a site of conquest. (13) The
door, which should have been a boundary, (14) became a cage. (15)
Some prayed for escape. (16) Others never knew they could. (17)
They thought pain was simply how love sounded in private. (18)
And when they left— (19) if they left— (20) they carried the house
inside them. (21) The tension in their jaw. (22) The flinch at kind-
ness. (23) The inability to sleep in silence. (24) And when they built
new homes, (25) they did so on fractured ground. (26) For no one
had taught them how to build with care. (27) Only how to endure.
(28) And still, the world said, “At least you had a roof.” (29) But a
roof is not safety. (30) A room is not love. (31) A family is not sanc-
tuary. (32) And the soul, remembering the door that never opened,
(33) wandered the world searching for a place (34) where peace did
not come with conditions.
55. Of the motherless Children, (1) There are children born
every hour not from Love, but from accident, from violence, from
quietness. (2) Their first lullabies are sirens. (3) Their first toys are
trash. (4) Their first gods are absent. (5) No arms to hold them. (6)
No language to name their pain. (7) No warmth but the sun through
shattered glass. (8) The cities call them feral. (9) The schools call
them broken. (10) The systems do not call at all. (11) They learn to
crawl through glass and guilt. (12) Learn hunger before alphabet.
(13) Learn fear before faith. (14) And some grow teeth — sharp
from surviving. (15) And some grow silence — long and deep. (16)
And some never grow at all. (17) The world counts them as num-
bers. (18) Prisons as projections. (19) Markets as margins. (20) But
no one counts their lost dreams. (21) Where was mercy when they
wept in language no one cared to learn? (22) Where was justice
when the judge had never lived their street? (23) Where was grace
when they were blamed for the wounds they inherited? (24) They
are the children of neglect. (25) Of poverty passed down like heir-
loom. (26) Of rage baptized in abandonment. (27) And still — still
— they survive. (28) Walking scars in secondhand shoes. (29) Some
even manage to sing. (30) But this chapter is not about hope. (31)
This is the gospel of ruin. (32) And here, the children are not saved.
(33) They are forgotten. (34) Buried under policies. (35) Mourned
by no names.
56. And they passed it down, (1) There was a boy who
watched his father strike the table with a fist of thunder. (2) And
though the boy flinched, no one spoke of fear. (3) They spoke in-
stead of discipline. (4) They said, He is a man, and this is what men
do. (5) And so the boy learned to hold his tears like a man holds a
knife — tightly, secretly. (6) And when he became a man, his hands
trembled with all he had never said. (7) And a mother spoke sweet-
ness by day, but spat bitterness by night. (8) Her heart was a locked
box of dreams long dead, and she cursed her daughter with the same
key. (9) She told her, Be quiet, be small, be pretty, be pleasing. (10)
She told her, Do not want too much. Wanting leads to ruin. (11) And
the daughter wore her voice like a wound. (12) And in time, she for-
got what it once sounded like. (13) A man died, and with him went
the secrets no one dared ask. (14) He had suffered greatly, but he
spoke of it only in jokes. (15) His pain was folded into the creases of
tradition. (16) They said he was strong, for he never cried. (17) But
the trees in his yard wilted, for they had no water. (18) And a family
gathered for dinner, as they always did. (19) They passed plates, but
not truth. (20) They chewed food with their teeth and swallowed
their stories whole. (21) The silence became the heirloom. (22) The
denial became the inheritance. (23) And the children learned what
they were not allowed to feel. (24) And they learned what could not
be spoken. (25) And they passed that learning on. (26) And the pain
walked from one generation to the next, dressed in different names.
(27) But the shape of it remained. (28) It looked like rage. (29) It
looked like shame. (30) It looked like distance. (31) And the people
said, This is just how it is. (32) And they called the curse “normal.”
57. Of the Silence between generations, (1) The old spoke
in riddles, (2) but the young had no time to listen. (3) The young
cried in signals, (4) but the old mistook it for noise. (5) Between
them lay a desert, (6) dry with misunderstandings. (7) They blamed
each other for forgetting, (8) but neither had been taught how to re-
member. (9) Grandmothers hummed lullabies to walls. (10) Grand-
children memorized hashtags instead of history. (11) They sat at the
same table, (12) but feasted on different ghosts. (13) The wisdom
of the aged soured into bitterness, (14) and the fire of youth was
dismissed as arrogance. (15) They both wept for the same things
— (16) but in different languages. (17) And the translators were too
tired. (18) And the bridges had collapsed from disuse. (19) And so
each generation wandered its own wilderness, (20) mistaking exile
for tradition.
58. Of the Silence That Was Never Answered, (1) The hu-
man cried out — not once, but countless times. (2) Not always with
words, but in tremors. In glances. In pauses. (3) But the world did
not listen. (4) And so, they learned not to scream. (5) They learned
to cope instead of connect. (6) To function instead of feel. (7) A
child hid in their room and called it independence. (8) A friend
stopped replying and called it healing. (9) A partner went quiet
for weeks and called it space. (10) But beneath it all was silence.
(11) Not the sacred kind — (12) but the kind that bruises. (13) The
kind that echoes every time you check your phone and find noth-
ing. (14) The kind that fills a room with noise and still feels empty.
(15) The human began to talk to themselves in ways they wished
others would. (16) “I’m proud of you.” (17) “I see you.” (18) “You
are not too much.” (19) They rehearsed conversations that would
never happen. (20) They wrote letters no one would read. (21) They
performed well-being for people who never asked. (22) And still
— they longed to be asked. (23) Not “What do you do?” (24) But
“What aches?” (25) Not “How are you?” (26) But “Are you still
holding on?” (27) They began to laugh less loudly. (28) Cry more
quietly. (29) Apologize for wanting to be heard. (30) And eventual-
ly, many stopped speaking at all. (31) Not because they had nothing
to say — (32) But because silence had answered them too many
times.
69. And They Were Not Enough, (1) There was a man who
rose high in the eyes of others. (2) His name was known, his face
lit screens, and many desired what he had. (3) But when the noise
fell away, he sat alone with a hollow that no praise could fill. (4)
Each applause echoed off the walls of his emptiness. (5) He bought
new things, but the ache remained. (6) He sought new lovers, but
they only mirrored his loneliness. (7) And a woman looked into the
mirror and counted her flaws. (8) Her body was a battlefield she had
never declared war on. (9) She starved it, shaped it, painted it, and
still it betrayed her. (10) Each imperfection was a crime against the
image she had learned to worship. (11) And though many told her
she was beautiful, she could not believe them. (12) For she had been
taught to measure herself in inches, likes, and glances — never in
truth. (13) A child brought home a drawing, bright and strange and
alive. (14) But it was not pinned to the fridge — it was corrected.
(15) The tree was not the right shape. (16) The sun had too many
colors. (17) And so the child learned to shrink the world inside the
lines. (18) And to believe that wonder was wrong. (19) And a man
with calloused hands built houses he could never live in. (20) He
worked without ceasing, but was called lazy for not becoming rich.
(21) He was told his worth was not in the work, but in what the
work could buy. (22) And so he buried his pride beneath shame,
though his labor fed cities. (23) In all these, the world whispered:
You are not enough. (24) And the people, hungry for love, devoured
each other instead. (25) They offered masks, not faces. (26) They
offered noise, not presence. (27) They grasped for wholeness in ev-
ery place but within. (28) And so they remained forever starving.
(29) And they called this hunger “ambition.” (30) And they called
this emptiness “normal.”
70. Of the Faces behind the Masks, (1) And they wore fac-
es that were not theirs. (2) Not to deceive, but to survive. (3) They
smiled when their hearts screamed. (4) They nodded in agreement
while dying in disagreement. (5) A girl learned to laugh at jokes that
bruised her spirit. (6) A boy shook hands with those who had buried his joy.
(7) And they called this maturity. (8) But it was burial. (9)
It was the art of disappearing in plain sight. (10) They walked into
rooms and left their truth at the door. (11) They silenced themselves,
not out of kindness, but strategy. (12) They grew polite in their own
undoing. (13) A woman once said, “I love you,” while swallowing
her grief like poison. (14) A man once said, “I’m happy,” while his
hands trembled from silence. (15) And when they were alone, they
dared not remove the mask — (16) For they had forgotten the shape
of the face beneath. (17) The mask became skin. (18) The lie be-
came language. (19) And the self? (20) Lost between mirrors. (21)
They performed belonging. (22) They mimed success. (23) They
danced in funerals and called it celebration. (24) And their souls,
locked behind the costume, whispered: (25) “I am here. But I am
not seen.”
71. And they worshiped their Reflections, (1) And there
arose a generation who fashioned gods in their own image. (2) Not
of stone nor flame, but of pixels and polished glass. (3) They held
up their devices like sacred mirrors, and beheld themselves, and
said, “Behold, I am worthy.” (4) And they did not seek to become
good, but only to appear good. (5) They fed their likeness into the
mouths of strangers and called it love. (6) They measured virtue in
symbols and approval in hearts made red. (7) The mother photo-
graphed her child’s tears and called it beauty. (8) The man filmed
his kindness and called it grace. (9) But when no eye watched, the
kindness ceased. (10) And the soul, once wild and wide, became cu-
rated. (11) They trimmed it to fit the frame. They filtered it to match
the trend. (12) They no longer asked, “Is it true?” but only, “Will
they like it?” (13) The hunger to be seen devoured their need to see.
(14) They forgot how to witness without performing. (15) A girl
once wrote a poem in secret, and it bloomed like a hidden spring.
(16) But her friends laughed, and she buried it in shame. (17) A boy
once wept beside his brother’s grave, but the world saw not, so he
said nothing. (18) And they learned to package pain in humor, and
sorrow in spectacle. (19) They mocked what they loved, and loved
what they envied, and envied what destroyed them. (20) And in
time, they no longer knew the shape of their own hearts. (21) They
became strangers to themselves — (22) Not out of tragedy, but out
of performance. (23) And in the temples of trend, the prophets were
algorithms. (24) And the only truth that mattered was the one that
could be monetized. (25) And when the mirror cracked, they did not
mourn — (26) They only searched for a newer one, clearer, bright-
er, more false.
76. Of the Mirror That Refused to Lie, (1) When the noise
stopped — briefly, suddenly — they looked around. (2) The walls
were clean. The faces were pleasant. The metrics were high. (3) But
something was wrong. (4) Deeply, undeniably wrong. (5) They had
everything. And they were empty. (6) They had control. And they
were lost. (7) They had order. And they could not breathe. (8) They
stood in rooms they had decorated, with lives they had curated. (9)
But their reflection did not look back. (10) They asked: “Who am
I?” (11) And the mirror said: “What do you mean?” (12) “You are
what you show. You are what they believe.” (13) But they felt the
ache — behind the chest, behind the laughter, behind the work. (14)
And the ache said: No, that’s not true. (15) They tried to scroll past
it. (16) They tried to busy themselves. (17) They tried to blame.
(18) But the mirror kept showing them what they didn’t want to
see. (19) Not shame. (20) Not failure. (21) But absence. (22) The
absence of something they could not name. (23) The loss of some-
thing they had never learned how to hold. (24) A gap between the
life they lived and the life they needed. (25) A silence at the center
of every sentence. (26) And for the first time, they did not perform.
(27) They did not explain. (28) They simply stood there — in the
wreckage of the self they had sold — and saw it. (29) Not to fix
it. Not yet. (30) But to know: This is real. (31) And the mirror, for
once, did not distort. (32) It did not flatter. It did not simplify. (33)
It reflected. (34) And it waited.