The need to belong

We wander through the age of glass and sound,

Our faces pixel-lit, our hearts half-known.

In circles ever widening, we’re bound,

Yet lonely in the crowd, together—alone.

We build our houses out of mirrored praise,

Where words replace the warmth of skin.

Our laughter fades through data’s maze,

And no one knows where we begin.

The hand that trembles wants to hold a soul,

But pride restrains what truth could mend.

We barter closeness for control,
And call estrangement a modern friend.

We speak of unity and grace,
But build confessionals of stone.

Each mask becomes another face,
Until the real is overgrown.

Some find a tribe in fleeting cause,
And chant belief as proof they’re seen.

Yet every fervent crowd still draws

A line between the pure and mean.

Connection hums through hidden wires,

But hearts still hunger for the warm.

We feed our doubts to quiet liars,
Who promise peace in echoed form.

To need is not a lesser thing,
It marks the life that still believes.
The lonely seek what songs may bring,

A gentle truth the world conceives.

Each wound we hide in silent code
Becomes another’s unseen plea.

The stories that our pain bestowed
Reveal the same fragility.

We judge the weak, yet fear their fate,

Pretend that strength can heal the soul.

But only kindness can translate
The language that can make us whole.

Our differences are borrowed hues,

The palette of the human clay.
The ones we love, the ones we lose,

Compose the colors of decay.
And still we strive for sacred lands,

The home that whispers, you belong.

It lives not built by mortal hands,
But found when we forgive the wrong.

One moment shared—a fleeting nod,

Two spirits meet and disappear.
The ache of distance becomes God,
Whose silence draws our cries sincere.

So love remains the grand disguise,

It heals, it breaks, it learns to bend.

Through fractured hearts the truth will rise—

We need each other to ascend.
The child, the elder, rich or poor,
Each bears the same unspoken call.

To be remembered, nothing more,
And leave a light that touched us all.

…

DCG