Once, I was a man—broad-shouldered, sure-footed,
Two eyes clear as morning, two hands for the world.
Now, my reflection stares with a singular gaze,
A lone, unblinking witness to what fate unfurled.
Four arms twist where two once rested,
Fingers grasping at a life now torn.
And where I walked, where I stood so steady,
Pale hands now meet the dust, reborn.
The streets hum low with shattered voices,
Once proud, once cruel, now trembling, new.
The world remade in chaos’ furnace,
Fused in ways none ever knew.
I mourn the form I called my own,
The careless ease of days before,
The thoughtless steps, the passing glances,
That I shall know again no more.
And yet—what is this, within the silence?
This chorus soft of fused and frayed?
No stranger now, no outcast lingers,
For all are changed, all remade.
Empathy swells where scorn once festered,
Hands once cruel now reach instead.
Where difference was a mark of exile,
It is the law by which we’re led.
So I, the cyclops, rise unshaken,
Four arms strong and hands held high.
Not lost, not lesser—only different,
And in that difference, we survive.
Let the world be forged in kindness,
Let the fused yet find their grace.
What once was broken now unites us,
What once was ruin shapes this place.
And so I walk on, hands to earth,
Not cursed, not damned, but something new.
A world reborn in fractured beauty,
A future vast—a broader view.