4. The Boy and the Man

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Once, there was a little boy

who tried to love with his whole heart.

 

He reached out with open hands,

but the world did not know how to hold him.

So he learned to keep his hands to himself.

 

The boy waited for someone to come, but no one did.

He stayed quietly and taught his chest not to ache so loudly.

 

Over the years, the boy grew tall.

A man emerged where the boy once stood.

Graceful and beautiful in his strength.

 

But the boy did not grow with him.

He stayed behind,

small and trembling in the shadow of the man’s size.

 

So the man and the boy walk side by side but never meet.

 

The man knows how to survive:
He builds, he performs, he conquers.
But he does not know how to love.
 

The boy still wants what he always wanted:
to be seen, to be held, to be admired.

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He longs for someone to understand him,
but he has never known such a face.

 

Every time someone comes close,
he imagines them as a threat,
a shadow of the hurt that once shaped him.

The man feels the boy trembling inside him.

He pulls away,
blaming the world for deserting him.

 

He calls it freedom.
He calls it being himself.

 

But deep inside,
the boy cries.​​