[dVerse] June 25th — Ars Poetica with a Faulty Exit Door

A poem seldom arrive clean.

It comes in through the window

with dust on its knees,

carrying one cracked cup,

one unpaid bill,

one mother’s voice pressed

against the wrong side of a door.

It rarely ask for a desk.

It sits on the floor

beside the body

and begins taking attendance.

Here is the throat,

still functioning as a checkpoint.

Here is the stomach,

refusing citizenship.

Here is the girl under the desk,

still waiting for the bell

to mispronounce freedom.

A poem should never be used as a lantern.

Do not insult it with usefulness.

A poem is the matchstick

struck inside a locked room,

not enough to save anyone,

but... just enough to prove

there was oxygen here once.

Sometimes it is a witness statement.

Sometimes it is the broken crayon

smuggled out of childhood.

Sometimes it is my own handwriting

dragging a chair

to the centre of the court

and saying:

your honour,

the body remembers

what the father edited out.

As I have said before,

I do not write

because language heals.

I write because silence

keeps trying to inherit me.

I write because the wound

has developed clerical skills

and keeps misfiling my life

under manageable woman.

I write because somewhere

inside this humiliating machinery

there is still a small illegal door

with my name misspelled on it.

The poem finds it first.

Then it waits,

barefoot,

ink-mouthed,

disobedient,

until I remember

how to leave.

~ Oizys.

Written for dVerse - MTB: Ars Poetica Revisited by Grace on June 25th.