The Table

The lesson was don’t speak with a mouthful, And not at all when grown folk speak. My pitiful plate burns on my lap, So too does my sister’s on hers. The dinner table sits too small to invite children So we fade to silence and grow deaf to conversation In teacherless rooms, with vulgar blackboards We, of broken shirts and dirty shoes, paper planes that take flight with spitballs and enough noise to drown church bells, Ink-stained hands too mutual to laugh at, We grow communities around a kid’s desk. In corner offices and parliaments that stink of Hugo Boss and bare smug, The people I gave my sacred election reek with exclusion. at the table, they decree our lives While we fade with brooms in the back. Tomorrow, we will sit at the table. we will dance atop it with bare feet ‘til the world turns sweet with our benevolence we will build the table anew we shall carve it glory!