The Architect’s Dilemma

Are we the sum of choices—or the blueprint of another?
Bound by threads stitched in someone else's mind,
our paths cross, splinter, and bind,
each collision a script played out,
echoing from the hands that laid the tracks before us.

If I am made in your image,
and you in mine, then who dared first to dream,
to pen this sick manuscript of cause and effect?
Is it brilliance or cruelty to grant awareness,
yet leave us chained in half-light,
dangling on strings we never asked to hold?

They say hope is belief in something bigger, brighter,
but why not within us?
What stops us from shattering the glass,
from pulling down the gods,
from seizing the puppet strings?

Some march, head down, to the hum of others' lives,
while some dance wildly off-key, as if privy
to secrets we’ve missed, keys we lost along the way.
Are they free? Or simply blind to the binds?

Questions haunt—one on the heels of the next,
swirling like leaves in a storm, answers withheld.
The architect stays silent, grinning or grimacing,
as we turn in circles, tracing borrowed steps,
wondering if this was all a mistake,
or simply a masterpiece of misguided design.