The long-dead priest spoke as though dust,
his voice a mote across the beam of years:
“All have their cross,” he said.
A shape pressed deep into the bone of the world.

Some drag it behind,
grating the earth,
leaving splinters along their path,
its weight a chain of bitter steps.

Some lift it high,
shoulders set like hills against the gale,
hands raw but steady,
heart pounding a tattoo hymn into the breast.

Choice flickers in the cavern between,
a whisper across wisdom:
to bear, to rise, to bend, to meet
the burden, and the shape it leaves behind.