No Manual For This Poem by Oscar Auliq-Ice

Before anything else,
he is handed expectations
wrapped in ordinary language—
be useful, be steady, be enough
without asking what "enough" costs to become.

He grows into roles
the way others grow into rooms:
slowly,
carefully,
learning where not to bump into himself.

Some days are built from effort alone.
Wake, work, repeat—
a circle drawn so often
it begins to feel like a shape of life
instead of a way out of it.

No one writes instructions
for the parts that break quietly—
for the thoughts that arrive uninvited
and sit down without introducing themselves,
for the loneliness that does not announce itself
but organizes everything anyway.

He learns early
how to turn feeling into function:
anger becomes discipline,
fear becomes silence,
sadness becomes something scheduled for later
that never arrives on time.

And still, the world assumes continuity—
as if carrying weight
means the weight is not real.

There are men sleeping in fragments:
on benches, in memories, in borrowed rooms of time.
There are men speaking less and less
because words have learned
how easily they are ignored.

There are men who have stood too long
at the edge of disappearing
without anyone noticing
the slow negotiation it took to stay.

But even in this uneven weather of living,
something persists that was never fully erased:

a hand still capable of reaching,
a voice still capable of returning,
a moment where being heard
does not feel like an accident.

So if there is a message
that does not pretend to solve everything,
let it be this:

No one is born knowing how to carry everything alone.
And nothing about endurance
makes silence a requirement.

Men are not made of absence.
They are made of what remains
when absence is no longer enough.