Chapter Text
A rare opportunity fell into my hands not as a result of my labors or my merits, but as though flung at me in pity, a reluctant charity bestowed by a cold and indifferent world. It was a slum born chance, fragile as frost under the morning sun, and yet, it mocked me.
Hope, tethered to the cruel demands of money, a thing I had no claim to, no means to procure. I stood there, a nameless grain in the desert of humanity, clawing at the unyielding sands, searching for something, anything, to turn this fleeting moment into something lasting, something real.
The absurdity of it all bore down on me like a great, suffocating weight: to be offered salvation, only to find it locked behind a door whose key was my inadequacy. And yet, I dug deeper. I dug not out of hope, but out of a strange, quiet defiance a refusal to let the world bury me, even as it seemed determined to do so.
Perhaps it was madness; perhaps it was pride. But in that digging, I found a bitter kind of solace, the solace of knowing that I had not yet succumbed to despair.
And now, dear reader, I turn to you, not to justify or to seek absolution, but to acknowledge you—to thank you. Your presence here, reading my words, is a comfort I did not expect but deeply cherish. In sharing these thoughts, these fragments of my words, you have allowed me to glimpse a world beyond my solitary. For this, I am grateful.
I know some of you walk the same narrow path, caught between opportunity and survival, questioning every step. To you, I say: you are not alone. We tread this uncertain ground together, searching for a light that flickers faintly on the horizon.
Yet, despite the weight of it all, I wish for you something brighter;
May joy find you, not as a prize for toil, but as a gift, unbidden and pure. May you taste life as you long for it to be, not as it is prescribed. If my words, born of my trials, offer you the faintest warmth, let it be a spark to carry you forward. Live boldly, not as the world demands, but as your soul desires.
And so, with all my gratitude and a trembling hope, I leave you with this: here I present Ink and Embrace, Part 2.
- Kefi.