There was a hole where my conscience should’ve lived.
I filled it with everything I couldn’t fit inside a dream.
My father said the meek inherit. I said let them have it.
I’ll take the earth and leave the meek to manage.
Boardrooms thick with handshakes, promises like tissue paper —
I collected debts from men who’d thank me for the knife.
Stacked the chips so high the dealer couldn’t see my face.
Called it ambition. Hustle. Winning the race.
The finish line kept moving.
The hunger never quit.
The more I swallowed, the more the emptiness
bulged at the seams.
She said I’d lost my mind somewhere between
the third and fourth million.
I told her that’s the price of having vision.
She packed her suitcase with all the years I was never present.
Left a note that said I hope the portfolio’s pleasant.
I read it once, then watched the tickers climb,
then read it once again.
Filed it somewhere between regret and dividend.
The lawyers split everything clean down to the bone.
I won the house. Lost the only warmth that ever lived there.
And winter moved into every room I owned —
the kind of cold that money purchases
is the kind that never thaws.
I bought the mountain and I’m digging for what’s underneath.
The richest man in every room still dying on his feet.
They read the will in a room full of people
who learned my name the year I hit my first seven figures.
Every wing of every hospital, every charity foundation —
all named after a man who wouldn’t cross the street for you.
I gave away more than most men ever see
just to prove that losing it meant nothing to me.
And that’s the cruelest joke the devil ever wrote:
you can’t take it with you —
but it takes you when you go.
I bought the mountain, found a deeper hole beneath.
Carved my name in gold above a borrowed heartbeat.
Too much — was never — enough.