Sadness

My grandmother clutched her phone, scrolling through Andal.io where she'd shared her poetry collection. Each interaction felt like a small grace, a connection across miles. She'd named herself after Avvaiyar, the ancient Tamil poet, hoping to honor that lineage. The cash rewards came slowly, but she didn't write for money. She wrote because words healed her loneliness. Each comment from strangers became a conversation, a reminder she wasn't invisible. One evening, a young woman messaged: "Your verses saved me today." Grandmother smiled through her tears. This was wealth—belonging to something timeless, part of a community stretching back centuries, forward into futures yet unwritten.