“We do not discuss politics at the dining table 

in case we accidentally stab it with our forks, 

lift it to our open mouths

and swallow.

Furtively, we push it to the edge of our plates,

hoping that it might fall off and be cleaned away after the meal.

We scrub our plates with barbed wire

from the fence before we go to bed,

slitting our hands in the process,

draining our blood in the sink.

These hunger strikes are not safety.

They are a shovel in a graveyard.

When citizenship becomes an act of self-sacrifice or 

the tragedy of the choiceless, 

something has gone terribly wrong.

Silence is suicidal. Objection is a death wish.

Somewhere between the two is a place where my country lives.”

– Subjects as Critical as Breathing

originally published in Prufrock Journal

Issue 14, Flowers