These days, how much I swallow down. When mother looks at my unemployed, weary eyes and hides her tears while heaping rice on my plate, I swallow that weeping too, hiding it from her gaze. When I give someone a gift within my meager means, then realize it's passed into other hands or the one I gave it to will never use it — I look at my poverty and swallow all my expectations of them in one familiar, long sigh. I don't have to beg from father — yet the unease I nurture is far greater than this relief... this inability to buy him something when my heart wants to... Yes, I swallow this too, shamelessly. Because I'm so poor, my lover will grow tired of waiting and one day leave me for another's house... burning all my faith on a pyre, she still keeps in touch with him sometimes... I place this sorrow right beside father's torn sandals and swallow them both, just like that. Unable to pay the bill, I never sit in restaurants with friends, making endless excuses... the busyness of an unemployed man seems as old as the world itself... Yes, I've been swallowing the exhaustion of crafting these lies for ages. Though my little sister sometimes grows sad and cries when my acquaintances make mocking me their birthright, I no longer let it touch my skin — I simply swallow it all. Those heartless people who escaped unscathed after saying I'd never amount to anything in this life — today I somehow swallow watching them win too. Those who left because I wasn't worth keeping — everything I did for them, everything I lost — I magnificently swallow the whole burden of drowning in this endless rain of thoughts. The one to whom I offered my entire existence in trust — when she now trades in my faith, even then I quietly step away and swallow the melodies of hurt one by one, like a defeated man. The one beside whom I stood for days on end — not as a servant but as a friend, with not the slightest expectation — when the weight of his position makes him pretend not to know me, or barely know me, in front of everyone, even then I swallow such skilled acting with a smile.
To survive, one must swallow. To protest and fight requires great strength. Even to justify myself by saying "One day I too will triumph in everyone's eyes" — that needs solid ground beneath my feet. I have none of that left; it's lost somewhere. Today I have only one identity: I am a weary half-person.