31. May 2026

The Hour I Chose

I will not be made small by them.

Not by laughter.
Not by gossip.
Not by the soft little cruelties of people
who mistake noise for strength.

I have known pain.
I have known grief.
I have stood where weaker men would have begged
to be misunderstood less.

But I am not only myself.

I carry my wife’s peace.
I carry my children’s name.
I carry the dead behind me,
and the living who still need me upright.

I carry the hands that built, carved, wrote, fought,
planted, dug, and fed.

Coach builders.
Sculptors.
Writers.
Soldiers.
Farmers.
Miners.
Chefs.

I carry the women who kept the roof from falling,
and the men who came home black with work.
I carry the quiet ones who endured without applause,
and the hard ones who taught the blood to stand.

I am not only bone and breath.

I am what my blood remembers.

So I do not answer quickly.

To answer too quickly
would be to reduce myself.

Quick is for fools.
Loud is for the frightened.
Sneering is for the wicked.
Rage wastes good iron.

I have learned from the one-eyed god:
a wound can become a way of seeing.

So I remember.

I watch.
I learn the ground.
I send thought ahead of me like ravens.
I sharpen nothing in public.

And when the hour comes,
my answer will not be drunken, stupid, or wild.

It will be lawful.
It will be precise.
It will be record.
It will be witness.
It will be consequence.

It will be written so cleanly
that even cowards will understand it.

I will not be lowered by them.

I will protect my people.
I will honour my blood.
I will remember.
I will choose the hour.

And when my answer comes,
it will not be fury.

It will be the truth
arriving with my ancestors behind it.

by P A Mills