One Button

One Button

One button sleeps beneath a lid of calm,

A stillness taught to look like self control.

It waits while rooms agree on polished words,

And certainty rehearses its own role.

A finger learns the language of delay,

The pause between the breath and what is done.

We tell ourselves the world will always bend,

As if the sky were owned by anyone.

The screens repeat assurance without doubt,

The clocks behave as though they have no past.

Outside, the ordinary carries on,

Unaware how fragile seconds last.

A city holds its children close at night,

The lights stay on, the streets remember names.

No one can hear the distance thinning out,

No one can smell the future tasting flames.

Power insists that fear is discipline,

That mercy is a weakness dressed as care.

Yet strength might be the hand that does not move,

The moment when we choose to leave it there.

Let history record a quieter act,

A button left untouched, a world unburned.

Let wisdom be the choice that breaks the chain,

And proves that something darker can be unlearned.