When My Cup Runs Over Poem by Martins Akhoeneto

There will come a day
my cup will overflow
and those who knew my thirst
will remember my name.

They will remember
the little I brought home,
how they weighed my worth
against my harvest
and found me wanting.

They will remember the friend
who changed his road
when poverty
put me beneath his class.

They will remember Aga
a familiar hand
turned palm against me,
leaving me with
the knowledge of betrayal.

They will remember
how my words fell unheard
in crowded rooms,
wisdom passed over
for louder tongues.

Even at home,
I was eldest,
yet voiceless at the table
firstborn by blood,
stranger to counsel.

But time keeps receipts.

One day,
the feet that left
will find my doorpost again.

Old friends
will return by familiar roads,
wearing smiles
heavy with remembered absence.

I will know them.

I will know the difference
between those who missed me
and those who missed
what I might become.

Still,
let the door open.

I did not endure
to become what wounded me.

My answer
will not be revenge.

I will have enough
to give without keeping score,
enough to sit at tables
where my voice once went missing.

Let them ask
how I came this far.

I will not explain.

Let the years speak
in the language of consequence.

Let the house remember
its former silence;
let the table remember
the hands once empty.

Then I will lift my cup
not as evidence,
not as accusation,
but because a cup
was made to be filled.

And perhaps they will understand:

I was never
the little they measured.

I was the arithmetic
of years they could not count,
the seed beneath
the season's hard heel,
the voice they mistook
for silence.

So let them knock.

Let them enter.

Let them measure,
if they must.

What they once called little
has outgrown their measure.