They will always find a way
to reach me—
not with hands,
but with systems.
If not through my family,
then through employers
who smile while holding papers,
through institutions
that speak in forms
and erase me with stamps.
They don’t come screaming.
They come organized.
They call it procedure,
policy,
concern.
They don’t break bones.
They break time.
They delay, deny, redirect,
until life feels like a corridor
with no doors that open.
I stand there,
intact but exhausted,
watching the same pattern
change masks.
Still—
I am not destroyed.
I am interrupted.
And interruption
is not the same
as erasure.
I am still here.