[dVerse] May 15th - Inventory for Staying Alive in Public

One safety pin fastened to the inside of a wobbly long top.
One phone charged to 63%, which is not enough, but is treated like faith.
One friend who knows the cab number, the driver’s name, the route, and the exact hour to begin worrying.
One lipstick that has outlived three men and two versions of the self.
One packet of tissues.
One packet of lies: I’m almost there. / My brother is waiting outside. / I don’t live alone. / I have already sent your photo.
One key held between fingers like an ancestral weapon nobody officially taught us.
One mother’s voice stored in the body: sit properly, come home early, do not argue with strangers, do not become a story people tell in lowered voices.
One father’s silence after the screams folded into the wallet like an old receipt for a life nobody returned.
One group chat named something harmless where women exchange weather reports on men, streets, bosses, landlords, family functions, and which uncle not to sit beside.
One chocolate bar for blood sugar, rage, or the sudden need to remain human.
One screenshot.
One backup screenshot.
One joke made too quickly so fear does not get ideas.
One scarf adjusted, not for modesty, just for strategy.
One woman at the bus stop making eye contact with another woman and becoming, briefly, anti-establishment infrastructure.
One memory of being told not to make a scene.
One scene, kept ready.
One small private terror that the city is not the cage, only the corridor outside it.
One small private terror that leaving home might not mean leaving inheritance.
One small private terror that I have not left home; I have only learnt to carry it more quietly. I have only become more portable.
One recurring thought while waiting for the lift, the salary, the apology, the visa, the miracle: what if this is not a phase but the whole arrangement?
One small, stubborn tenderness: the little girl on the bus offering her seat to someone more tired than herself.
One performative prayer, not to be protected, but to arrive without having to become stone.
One ordinary evening.
One ordinary survival.
One ordinary woman unlocking her door, removing her earrings, and entering her own name again.

~ Oizys.

Written for dVerse Meeting the Bar: Unlock with lists, hosted by Björn Rudberg on Thursday, May 14th, 2026. The prompt asked us to use lists in poetry as structure, metaphor, inventory, negation, expansion, or simply as a way to begin. This is a list poem. Also a handbag audit. Also, unfortunately, a syllabus.