Bruised Skies, Silent Hearts

Everywhere I go, the world is noisy, unbearably loud. I can’t stand the sharpness of laughter that pierces the air. I struggle to understand today’s people—their ways, their minds. My friends were once like brothers to me. We spent Friday nights together, savoring the weekend as if it were sacred. But now, everything has changed. Faces are unmasked, and I can clearly see who’s my friend and who’s not.

I’m tired of falling into people’s hands like a losing card, shuffled and discarded. Judgment comes at me mercilessly from all sides. I’m no saint, but my needs feel ignored, my voice silenced. In my exile, my siblings are like sunsets—beautiful but distant. My parents are storms, rumbling and restless.

I wonder if my coworkers and so-called friends notice the bruises on my face. Sometimes, I can’t even find my own body, lost in the heaviness of burying a piece of myself alive. I wrote my final voiceless poem, but as a stateless man, the world gave me a name: The Kite.

They fly me against the wind, just to watch me falter, to see me suspended between the clouds and the earth, barely tethered. Those who mock my accent, the foreign characters with beautiful faces—they steal my breath with their words.

I hug a woman, not out of nervousness but to anchor myself. Yet I bleed brutally when I fly too far, becoming incurable, untouchable. My mother cried the day I was born, sensing something in my face—a mark, an omen—that none of my siblings carried. She calms my father whenever I come home drunk, but she never shares the truth with him or anyone else. Only my homeland knows the full weight of it.

In my grandparents’ time, I would have been a leafless corpse on a mountaintop, touched by fingers and tongues seeking blessings. Now, I seek isolation—not to sin, but to find meaning. To bloom in peace. To live where butterflies don’t die from human greed, where roses aren’t picked in screams.

A child in an orphanage once celebrated his first birthday with nothing but wishes—soft, muted whispers. I don’t want to hear the world’s loudness anymore. I hear it all too clearly, but I can’t promise anything. I’ve been sitting in this metaphorical wheelchair for far too long.