Waiting for something to happen 

 

All my life I have waited as I wait now.

For something to happen.

For something to change.

Something to make life better than it was and into something it might become.

I love my father, but do not love the life he lives, locked up in old traditions.

He has no room for new or better things.

Some of his kind frown at me for wishing to be something other than what I am, what they are, telling me I should have pride in what we all are.

Pride I have, only�

When I was a boy I ached to be a man, to live my life with my head raised and my eyes clear.

Is it wrong to wish for more than we have, to work towards some dream we might achieve as a man or as a people?

I am not shamed of what I am, or of my desire to be more.

Perhaps that is what makes all this most unbearable, not the hunger or the stench, not even the promise of death, but the perception that I am even less than what I thought I was, and that all these years waiting has led us to this place where we are told we are worthless as people or a race.

I lift my head and get whipped for it, and wonder about God, and what all the waiting was for.