ATLAS

At the edge of the river, a boy is learning how to carry.

He was taught silence first, to hush a scream with his teeth,

to dress grief in sunlight and call it morning. They say Atlas

held the sky, but no one speaks of the nights he wept into his own hands,

afraid the stars might hear him and shatter. I look at this boy

and see myself, left with be strong to bear until my spine

forgets it was ever a question. Again, Atlas didn’t volunteer—

the world just needed someone to name the ache.

What else do you do when your hands

are trained to lift things that break you? I’ve mistaken endurance

for love. Let someone rest her head where it hurts the most.

She called me safe, and I let her sleep on the part of me

I never show myself. Once, I looked at a mirror and didn’t

recognize my face. In its place, an architecture of burden

stared back. Tell me, what kind of God burdens a boy and still

calls it love, presses the sky into his spine and dares him not

to kneel? I promise I am not breaking. Just that, in the quiet

of my room, I shrug off the world, let it roll to the floor

like my clothes, and stand naked before my mirror,

as if I’m saying: this is all I have and I am. Me.

This body. This tender, trembling thing, still uncrushed.