"The Weight of Empty Hands"

The bridge was promised, but only pillars stand— reaching into the sky like questions with no answers. The farmer’s hands are cracked, his harvest heavy, yet his pockets rattle with nothing but dust. Rain drips through the classroom roof, children recite beside buckets, while speeches declare that “progress has arrived.” Convoys of tinted glass sweep past the waiting lines, and the crowd claps— though no bread is in their hands. And in the hush between headlines, a thought lingers like smoke: what truly costs more— the gold that disappears, or the hope that slowly dies?