“In the System That Forgot It Was a Lie”

I wake in a place with no morning— just flickers of fluorescence and the hum of someone else’s profit.

The walls don’t crack, they comply. The air doesn’t scream, it sighs like it’s been waiting too long for someone to notice how everything’s off by a few degrees.

I go to work in a machine that prints meaning in 12-point font but never feels it. It sells me back my time in thirty-second increments if I promise not to ask where it went.

I see others sleep with eyes open, dreaming debt, eating schedules, making gods out of CEOs and calling it choice.

They think freedom is the ability to rearrange your prison furniture.

But I see the cracks. I see the stitch marks where the truth was edited for content and censored for “tone.”

I see the ads whispering “You are not enough—buy this.” I see the policies say “You are too much—be quiet.”

And worst of all? I see them nod along. Smiling. Clapping. Scrolling.

To live in a broken system is to know every laugh costs something, every breath is licensed, and every moment of beauty was almost illegal.

It is to hold hope like a lantern in a room full of wind, and whisper to it: “Stay lit. I see you. I won’t let them blow you out.”

Because even here— in the fracture— truth flickers. And I do not blink.