Obedience to Misfortune

every birth is a prophecy,

but maybe the stars fell short

the night I was conceived.

perhaps I was born mid-collapse

when the universe was already folding in on its own syntax.

My name is a half-finished incantation

and I was abandoned at the altar of completion.

sometimes I think

my luck is a living thing,

a small god that feeds on disappointment,

licking my palms clean of hope.

And so, I have learned the geometry of failure:

how every angle of effort bends inward,

And the way reward is a myth built on someone else’s certainty.

my work ripens into nothing.

my prayers evaporate mid-air,

as if ascension itself refuses to bear my weight.

I have seen lesser saints rewarded

for softer devotions.

and here I am,

the patron deity of failure,

kneeling to a god who never looks down.

some nights I imagine the same gods apologising;

Saying they got the equations wrong

still, I keep existing.

out of habit, maybe,

Or out of some obedience

to the machinery of misfortune.

and if this is destiny,

then I am its altar of miscalculation.

after all,

someone has to bear witness

to what it means

to be chosen

by nothing.