11/07/2026
The Weight of a Man
They told me,
"Be strong."
So I swallowed every storm,
until thunder learned my name.
I built walls
not to keep people out,
but to keep my tears
from becoming someone else's burden.
A man, they said,
must never tremble.
Must never break.
Must never ask
if anyone could carry him
for just a little while.
So I became
my own shelter,
my own soldier,
my own silent grave.
When the world grew heavy,
there was no hand on my shoulder.
Only the echo of my own heartbeat,
whispering,
"Stand up... again."
I have lifted everyone
until my own arms forgot
what it feels like
to be held.
I have smiled
with a soul full of cracks,
laughed
while my heart quietly mourned
the version of me
that once believed
someone would stay.
The cruelest truth
about being a man
is not the pain.
It is learning
that when you fall,
the earth is often
the only thing
that catches you.
And still,
tomorrow will ask me
to wear the same tired face,
to carry the same impossible weight,
to become the hero
of a story
where no one notices
the hero is bleeding.
If I disappear one day,
don't call me weak.
Call me a man
who carried mountains
with empty hands,
who screamed in silence,
and who kept walking
long after hope
had stopped walking beside him.
"The hardest part of being a man isn't carrying the weight—it's realizing no one notices when you're the one who's breaking beneath it."
07/11/2026
