Pocket-Watching Dreams

There’s a kind of silence that follows you when your account balance is low. An ache that hums in the background, even when you laugh. It’s hard to dream when you’re broke. Not because you lack ambition, but because everything is calculated. Can I afford transport? Will there be food at the event? Will they mock my shoes?

Poverty teaches you a quiet choreography. You learn how to blend in. To smile like you’re not constantly doing mental arithmetic. Some of us don’t say no because we’re busy. We say no because we don’t have money, and we’re too tired to explain.

And yet we dare to dream.

We dream on borrowed data. We submit scholarship applications with borrowed laptops. We dare to want more in a country that offers us crumbs.

And that, in its self is a kind of rebellion. A kind of beauty.

DandelionPrecious from MANI