To a brother I never had

To a brother
I never had,

never held,
never stood or played beside in the open sun

and yet
I speak to you
as if you have always been there
waiting just outside the noise

tell me this, brother

if you knew
what it is
to live close to one and half decades under inferno
not once
but continuously

needles and drugs
stretching
cutting
rewriting the body
into something that it should never become

would you still call it life

I have lived
as if my years and tears
were taken in pieces
as if endurance itself
was being measured against me

again
and again
and again
and again
and again

and the evil did not stop

not once

no witness came forward
no system broke
no voice intervened

nothing

so I speak to you

you exist
because I required
one place
where truth is not negotiated

listen carefully

I will not be able to have children

not because of choice
because I was fractured

in mind
in heart
in body
in soul

systematically

because I was fought
without courage
without exposure
without consequence

like cowards operate

so understand this

what ends with me
does not end

it changes form

it leaves blood
and becomes memory

it leaves biology
and becomes something harder

and you

you will carry it

not as revenge
not as rage
not as noise

but as weight

each person
who chose to inflict suffering

will not escape it

not publicly
not privately
not internally

because what was done
does not vanish

it embeds

it settles

it becomes part of them

in the quiet

in the gap between thoughts

in the moment
where there is no distraction left

they will meet it

fully

and there will be no language
to defend it

no narrative
to dilute it

no witness
to perform for

only themselves

and what they know

and that knowing
will not leave

not in daylight
not in sleep

not even in forgetting

because some things
once done

do not exit a system

they remain
until they are faced

completely

you will remember

what happens
when suffering is ignored

you will remember
what it creates

and you will not allow
silence
to protect it

and if the world asks you
why you stand the way you do

you will not explain anything

you will say only this

someone was pushed
to the edge of disappearance

and did not disappear

someone was broken
and did not submit

someone endured beyond
limits of hundred men as one man,  
and still refused
to commit suicide.