The Weight Of Being The Son Poem by Dhiman Shah

Within the hearth where blood and duty bind,
There stands a boy with burdens undefined;
Not born of stone, nor carved of ironed will,
Yet tasked to bear what breaks his spirit still.

They name him "strong, " and in that word conceal
A thousand wounds they never choose to heal;
For strength, to them, means silence in his pain,
A bowed-down head, a heart that must abstain.

From dawn till dusk his youth is slowly sold,
His laughter taxed, his gentler dreams controlled;
He learns too soon the price of being born
A son whose tears must never greet the morn.

"Be firm, " they cry, "for such is manly grace, "
Yet never see the cracks upon his face;
They crown him with the weight of all their need,
And call it love—
though love should never bleed.

In quiet hours, when walls forget to hear,
He counts his breaths to steady rising fear;
For though his hands are trained to shoulder more,
His soul grows tired of fighting every war.

He is no god, nor pillar carved of stone—
But flesh and thought and trembling, all his own.
Yet still they load his youth with debts unpaid,
Demanding strength from one already frayed.

O cruel decree of roles so tightly spun,
That steals the boy while shaping "the good son";
For in their hope, their fear, their broken dream,
They miss the child beneath the man they deem.

And should he falter, bend, or dare to cry,
They brand his hurt a flaw, his grief a lie;
Unknowing how much courage it doth take
To wake each day and never truly break.

Remember this, ye hands that ask too much:
Even the strongest hearts may fail to touch
The weight of worlds laid cruelly on one frame—
For sons are human,
not a family's flame.

And when his strength at last begins to fray,
When silent nights consume the light of day,
Let none cry shock should he no longer stand—
For even stone will crack by unseen hand.

A son, long crushed beneath unspoken load,
May bleed in silence on duty's road;
For hearts denied the right to ache and bend
Do not grow strong—
they break, and find no end.

So mark this truth, before more souls are spent:
No love is pure that feeds on sacrifice unmeant;
For man is flesh, not fate, nor boundless flame—
And even sons have limits to their pain.