The Weight Poem by Emeka GOC

The Weight
(The Wounded Healer)

Angry and tired; tired in the bones,
Where years collect like dust on photographs nobody has moved.
Tired of hands that rush, off clipped instructions,
Of strangers arriving with forms and leaving with conclusions.
Tired of being translated into symptoms,
Of having a life measured through five-minute windows.
The mornings test him and the nights test him harder.

But between them, beneath the blue glow of the television,
They sit quietly, loving his family in the silent language of presence.
And I stand in the doorway between truth and paperwork,
Between the man I know and the version of him that fits inside a report.

I worry about her worrying my father worries.
Because words become records.
Records become meetings.
Meetings become decisions.
Decisions have heavy weight.

Enough weight to carry a man away from the house
Where his memories still recognize the walls,
Where every creak in the floorboards knows his name.
I do not want him hidden; I want him held.

A room that belongs to him father.
Gentle voices. Dignity stitched into the small things.
Someone to help him dress without undressing his pride.
Meanwhile, I am carrying my own history.

Half year from prison, half year clean.
One year of swallowing storms,
Collecting instructions, walking past old temptations
Without letting them call me home.
Some wounds survive freedom.

I learned that; I broke once, open and helpless,
Crying like a child for parts of myself I thought I'd buried.
The gates opened; but the pain stayed.

So I lift iron, Strike the punch bag.
Paint roofs beneath wide skies.
Walk, run and fix some fences.
Renovate, repair whatever I can reach.
Because sometimes mending a broken gate
Is easier than mending a broken memory.

The trauma still waits
The panic still circles.
The past still finds my address.
Some nights it knocks softly.
Some nights it kicks the door in.
Yet still, I move; One foot. One round. One day.

This is the new normal, the new routine,
Again. Again. Again.
Because survival is rarely heroic.
It does not arrive with trumpets.
It looks like turning up.
Telling the truth.
Taking the med as at when due
Making the right contacts,
Calling only the few recovered.

Answering when you are called,
when parents ring even after the argument.
It looks like choosing tomorrow when today feels impossible.
That is courage; Not the absence of fear,
But the refusal to surrender to it.
And if hope lives anywhere, it lives here.

In a son standing guard over his father's dignity.
In a father still fighting for himself.
In a man who rises every morning
With yesterday's hands still clutching his shirt.
That is the victory.

Not perfection; Just persistence.
Not redemption wrapped neatly with a bow.
The stubborn, sacred act of getting up once more.
And carrying the weight of home, without putting it down.