News Poem | For all of us

2022 George Floyd rally in Newark, NJ. Photo credit: Josie Gonsalves for Public Square Amplified

This morning I got up
slowly.
My hip ached.
Sleep stayed far away.
The weight of the world arrived early,
pressing down on my chest
before I’d even had a chance to rise.

It felt like failure.
It felt like defeat.
But it’s not.
It’s the echo of effort,
the cost of carrying on
when so much feels lost.

I haven’t failed.
Neither have you.
We are tired, not broken.
Quiet, not absent.
Still standing
even when we wish we could lie down
and let the world forget our names for a moment.

I see us
all of us,
hiding behind smiles,
shrinking behind strength,
afraid to show the soft underbelly of our pain.

But I see the flicker in your eyes.
The story you carry in your shoulders.
The way your silence
says more than words ever could.

I long for connection.
Not just for myself
but for us.
The ones who lost touch,
not from lack of love
but from the daily work
of surviving.

We miss each other.
We miss ourselves.

So this! is for you.
For us.
The weary, the tender,
the unseen.

I just want the sun again
not as pressure to shine,
but as a reminder
that warmth still exists.

And I want breath
slow, full,
uninterrupted by fear.

We are still here.
We are not failures.
We are a chorus of quiet strength
waiting to exhale
together.