Family Business

At home

screams stack up

in a pile

behind closed doors.

A bruised child,

a silenced sister,

a valley gagged in shadows,

“family business”

best forgotten,

best hidden,

best erased

and you walk past it,

feet on floors that remember blood,

hands that touch nothing,

eyes that close too easily.

The neighbor coughs.

The neighbor bleeds.

And suddenly

you are awake

shouting to skies that do not answer.

Your voice borrowed,

your grief rented,

palms open for nothing,

your outrage echoes

in empty streets.

An outsider land

becomes a slogan to scream,

a badge stitched in foreign sorrow

while your own kin

rots in chains you refuse to see.

Mouths gagged.

Eyes beaten.

Bones broken.

Tongues ripped from loyalty.

And still you look away.

Still you whisper lies

to keep comfort close.

Still the shadows swallow truth whole.

It is easier to mourn

where mourning wins applause.

Easier to rage

where rage costs nothing.

Easier to live

with conscience rented,

with guilt outsourced,

with justice a whisper beyond your walls.

Justice is no visitor.

It does not cross seas.

It does not knock on doors.

It does not pause for staged grief

or hollow virtue.

It does not forgive cowardice.

It does not bend to convenience.

Wake.

Or do not.

The silence is yours.

The blood is yours.

The screams,

the bones,

the rot in your conscience

the god you pray to

turns its face,

leaves you alone,

with nothing,

but the stink of your cowardice

and the taste of your own silence.

At home

the walls remember.

The floors remember.

The shadows remember.

And when you gouge your eyes out,

because daylight truths are too obstinate for myopia,

you drown your own blood screams

in some distant lament,

your conscience sleeps

in loyalty-induced coma.

And still you whisper

“family business.”

And still you pretend.

And still the blur stretches on.