“I could see it in their children’s faces. They could feel it in their empty hearts.”
PAINFUL AVENUE
A Prophetic Vision
I saw the future…
And it was called Painful Avenue.
I stood at the end of a long, empty street.
The buildings were broken.
The windows were dark.
Barbed wire stretched across the road.
And everywhere I looked…
There were faces.
Sad faces.
Tired faces.
Mothers holding their children.
Children holding teddy bears.
Prams standing empty in the rain.
People with nowhere to go…
And nobody coming to help.
I looked into the future…
And the poor were still suffering.
They always seemed to be suffering.
Different year.
Different government.
Different promises.
Same Painful Avenue.
The rich had bigger houses.
Bigger cars.
Bigger walls.
Bigger gates.
But behind those gates…
The world outside was falling apart.
They told the people:
“Everything is getting better.”
But the people knew better.
They could see it in their children’s faces.
They could feel it in their empty pockets.
They could hear it in the silence of their homes.
The politicians stood on the television…
Smiling.
Promising.
Pointing towards tomorrow.
But tomorrow never came for the people on Painful Avenue.
The poor kept waiting.
The children kept growing.
The mothers kept crying.
And the world kept moving past them.
I saw a little girl sitting beside a broken wall.
She was holding a teddy bear.
She wasn’t crying.
She had already cried all her tears.
Beside her was an empty pram.
And behind her…
A street full of people who had been forgotten.
Then I saw something worse.
I saw the future becoming used to it.
People walked past the suffering…
And didn’t even look.
The crying became background noise.
The poverty became scenery.
The broken homes became normal.
The lonely children became statistics in someone’s report.
And the world simply carried on.
I looked further down the avenue.
There was a black heart lying among black roses.
And above it…
A sign.
PAINFUL AVENUE
Then I heard a voice.
Not from the politicians.
Not from the television.
Not from the rich.
It came from the people standing in the street.
And the voice said:
“How long?”
How long must the poor suffer?
How long must children pay for the mistakes of adults?
How long must mothers carry the weight of a broken world?
How long can people be ignored before they stop believing?
I looked into the distance.
The sky was black.
But there was a tiny light at the end of the avenue.
And I realised something.
The future wasn’t written yet.
Painful Avenue was not a prophecy of what must happen.
It was a warning of what could happen…
If nobody listens.
If nobody cares.
If nobody speaks.
If everybody keeps walking past.
So I turned around…
And looked back at the people.
The mothers.
The children.
The old.
The poor.
The forgotten.
And I understood.
Painful Avenue isn’t a place.
It’s a warning.
And the people who always suffer…
Are the people who have always been expected to stay silent.
Women & Children Of The Future…