Empty-Handed

They came with hope, with dreams in hand,

But life had drawn a harsher plan.

One illness tore their world apart,

One diagnosis broke the heart.

In sterile halls where silence screams,

They clung to fading, fractured dreams.

A child asleep in beeping light—

A parent lost in endless night.

The debt grew high like rising seas,

While prayers dissolved on wounded knees.

And still the forms, the fees, the scans,

Each signature with trembling hands.

At night, the thoughts, they start to crawl—

"Is this my fault? Am I too small?"

Shame whispers in the mirror’s glass,

“You failed. You fall. You will not pass.”

Anxiety’s a constant tide,

Depression waits just by their side.

They smile so no one sees the war

Inside their soul, behind the door.

Their dreams, their future, turned to dust,

A final destiny, a broken trust.

They came to life with open palm,

To grasp at hope, to find some balm.

But all slipped through, like grains of sand,

The grave's cold grip, an unseen hand.

No medals hung for nights of fear,

No help for screams no one can hear.

Still, somehow, they rise each day—

To face the dark, to find a way.

With voices soft, with eyes gone red,

They walk through life but live half-dead.

So if you see them standing still,

Lost in thought or fighting will—

Don’t ask them why they look so spent,

Their silence is their monument.