The Termites That Refused to Die

They called them termites, the ones who built from the dust, who carried the weight of nations on their bare backs. They were spoken of in whispers, in boardrooms filled with smoke and polished ambition. The powerful said they multiplied too quickly, that they weakened the structure, that they needed to be controlled. So they sprayed laws like poison, flooded the streets with empty promises, and set fires made of hunger. Each election, the rich returned with smiles that smelled of perfume and deceit, telling the termites to trust, to wait, to believe.

But the termites learned. They learned to dig where the poison could not reach, to feed on the roots of truth that no decree could bury. Their children grew in the cracks of forgotten walls, their dreams humming beneath the marble floors of men who had never touched the earth. They were invisible until they moved together, until the sound of their gnawing became thunder. The house above them trembled, not from fear, but from the weight of what it had denied

And when the lights dimmed in the grand hotels, when the last toast was made to progress and control, the termites were still there. Quiet, patient, alive. The rich had built their towers high, but the ground still belonged to those who remembered struggle. For you can kill a body with hunger, silence a voice with power, but you cannot bury those who have learned to live beneath the floorboards of oppression. 

They are the termites that refused to o die.