He reads it at a grey desk under a grey bulb,
a man with a black marker and a sandwich
and a daughter who, I suspect, writes poems too.
First he crosses out the word freedom.
Too obvious, he mutters, and I agree.
I only put it there to give him something to do.
Then the moon. A moon can mean anything —
a lamp, a coin, a wound, a face in a window
that has been waiting too long. Out goes the moon.
The sea is next. The sea has no borders,
and that alone is a political opinion.
He draws a neat black wall across the waves.
He pauses at bread. Bread is harmless,
but the line before it says not enough,
so the bread goes too, and the hunger stays.
By the end my poem is a barcode,
a striped flag of a country with no anthem,
and one small word he missed: still.
Still is the word I hid it all inside.
Still here. Still writing. Still awake
at the hour he finishes his sandwich and goes home.
Somewhere in this city his daughter is reading
a book he did not have time to check.
I hope she underlines everything.
I hope the marker in her hand is yellow.
