My True Hero

By Valsa George

I had a quarrel with my own life
I didn’t want to divulge it to anyone I knew
It was then I met the one who in many eyes,
Had sparked feelings of sympathy or contempt

Confined to a wheel chair in a hospital room
Amid the smell of death and disease,
He looked so resigned to his fate
With a rare gleam sparkling his eyes
Convalescing after his sixth surgery,
Still having bouts of excruciating pain

What made me drawn to him, I cannot tell

Later I met him at his home several times,
Still on wheelchair, crooked and disfigured,
But with what stoic nonchalance,
He accepted his condition-
Cerebral palsy, a disease affecting all his limbs

He said it was after years of questioning
That he had learnt to take on his disability
It broadened his understanding of suffering
Giving him deltas of new insight…
He knows now, the stars would be brighter
Only with the light completely blown out!

Even when the ground falls beneath his feet
He finds a way to rise up from the ground
With every step he takes, he feels it better than yesterday
And waits for tomorrow in anticipation
Because he has made it today!

Sure he reigns as a true hero, stirring a spark
In the ash covered cinders of my heart

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