When the balance tilts hard in your favour, when the years are on your side, when time brings you nothing but fortune, you care little for it all.
Because you’re unable to see beyond the bridge of your nose at what gift you have. You are blinded to what is at the other side.
He is faceless.
Many a misfortune may come, but he is resilient. Rock bottom might be close most days, but he is confident of the springs on his feet, ready to propel him back to the top.
He has learnt the hard way that nothing is permanent and that is the only hope he has.
Think about wealth.
When you meet it in the bosom of your creators, all yours for the taking, you care not for the worries of the faceless – the one that was born devoid of any form of spoon in his mouth seem irrelevant and distant.
Because your tales are somewhat written ahead of you. Predestination awaits you. A soothing voice ever whispering “be still”.
But he at the other side knows not what is to come. His life hangs imperfectly in the balance. At no point does he rest.
He is the child born in the middle of the night when the overcast was a deathly black. The fortune-teller only promised difficulty and hardship.
He is the young boy, whose skin colour sets the tone for what life he shall live, and which path he may walk in. He is the stranger in the foreign land always watching his back, not knowing when or where the hunting wolf would attack.
He is the man who has seen many days, who has survived despite the odds stacked against him. All his life he’s known nothing about privilege except when he looks across the street at the punishment of god on him, a reflection of everything unholy.
He recognises favour from the distance, he calls it by the name but seems to push it away with every call.
He is nameless.
Crying in the dead of the night, head buried in the pillow, sobs shaking his body to the core. Because his efforts all but count. His screams buried in the wells of silence. His existence intangible. The world uncaring.
And nothings matters today, nor ever will. He’ll see but never touch. He’ll smell but never taste. He’ll come but never stay.
He knows this. He has been prepared for this. And maybe that is all the privilege he’ll ever get–the heads up that nothing here is for him. So he knows not to bother.
Prompt: Privileged
