The Sick

The Sick is a reflective narrative poem about a village that learned how to survive hunger without ever asking where it came from.

Told through the imagery of a soup passed from hand to hand, table to table, and generation to generation, this piece is about the things we inherit, the patterns we mistake for love, and the quiet ways loneliness learns to call itself home.

It is for the ones who waited at windows long after the road went quiet.

For the ones who kept setting places for people who never arrived.

For the ones who became so useful they forgot they were lonely.

For the ones who became so forgiving they forgot they were hurt.

Created from my home to yours, this poem is a place to sit beside the moment a person finally looks down and recognizes what they have spent years returning to.

The moment the pattern reveals itself.

The moment they realize that comfort and care are not always the same thing.

The moment they understand that something can smell like home and still leave them hungry.

Because sometimes what makes us sick does not arrive as cruelty.

Sometimes it arrives as tradition.

As habit.

As concern.

As love offered by hands that were doing the best they could with what they had been given.

And sometimes healing begins not when the hunger disappears, but when we finally stop mistaking it for nourishment.

The Sick is a story about inheritance, hunger, and the quiet courage it takes to leave the table before the hunger is gone.