by Nick Gisburne
She knocks, and I imagine it’s for me.
The rhythmic tapping travels down the duct.
Perhaps I could decode it, with a key,
A mystery too deep to deconstruct.
We share a prison, dank, depressing, cold,
Subversives, sealed forever in our cells,
Remembering the freedoms that were sold,
The slaughter, and the sickness, and the smells.
The conduit runs high above my head,
Too far to reach, to tap it, to reply.
She knocks, but is it hope, or pain, or dread?
A stubborn slave, refusing to comply.
It comforts me, but, on the seventh day,
In silence, in her memory, I pray.
