They’ll Make Being English a Crime

They’ll make being English a crime,  

he said, buttoned into his suit like history pressed flat,  

creased with certainty. His mouth, a red stamp,  

licked and sealed with fear.  

They’ll come for your teacups next,  

your cracked porcelain queens,  

the chipped edge of your father’s war medals,  

rusted with stories no one asked to hear.  

They’ll ban the drizzle, the queue,  

the stiff upper lip trembling under the weight  

of too many unsaid things.  

Flags will be contraband—  

folded triangles of treason,  

stitched with guilt, blood-red threads  

unraveling in the hands of boys  

who never learned to question  

what they were taught to salute.  

They’ll rename the streets,  

erase the echoes of empire  

tucked neatly under cobblestones.  

Your voice will be evidence,  

your accent an alibi you can’t trust.  

But listen—  

fascism doesn’t wear jackboots anymore.  

It walks in polished shoes,  

a handshake,  

a slogan slick with nostalgia,  

a mirror held up to your fears,  

asking, Isn’t this who you are? 

And maybe that’s the trick:  

not the crime of being English,  

but the lie that being English  

was ever something  

you had to defend.