“Alê a Brazilian doctor struggling with a job she doesn’t particularly like and the fact that it pays for her independence and ability to live in the big city”

In São Paulo’s sleepless artery,  
Alê walks through the waking dark—  
Her breath a plume on city glass,  
White coat trailing in the park.  
Yet heart and purpose howl apart  
In echoing tiled hospital halls,  
Where beeping IVs, exhaustion’s art,  
Compose the music of her call.

She’s stitched in iron-gray routine,  
Stethoscope and plastic gloves;  
A healer born—but not, it seems,  
For this grim chorus she’s part of.  
Each diagnosis, chart, and sigh,  
A ledger scribed in fleeting light;  
She dreams beneath fluorescent sky  
Of mornings brushed with color bright.

Yet paycheck in the end, the thread—  
A passport to her rented room,  
To markets full of mangoes red,  
Late weekends far from patient gloom.  
Independence learned in meals alone,  
In metro crowds, anonymous,  
Her life—a city's undertone  
Just loud enough to carry her.

At times, in corner bars she sits—  
Memory’s river running back  
To days of hope and naive wit,  
When futures gleamed, immune to lack.  
Still, each dawn, she ties her hair,  
Laces shoes, face calm and kind:  
In struggle's heart there flickers there  
A stubborn city’s peace of mind.

Independence, bought in hours—  
In every pulse, her truth resides:  
A doctor, healer, city flower,  
Blooming where her courage hides.

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