Division is what they want
The map is a skin we are tearing at the seams, ink-stained by the nibs of men in distant rooms who trade in the currency of Us and Them . They have turned the postcodes into battle lines, drawing circles around some, and crosses through the rest, until the very soil beneath our boots feels like a grudge. We are fed a diet of sharp, metallic words, detainment, mandate, lists , that sit like stones in the belly of the week. The air grows thin with the cold oxygen of suspicion, the way a neighbour looks at a window and wonders which colour is blooming on the ballot paper behind the glass. But look. The sun does not check the polling card before it warms the bricks of the terrace. The rain falls with an equal, silver grace on the Green, the Red, the Blue, the Reform. Our hearts are the same heavy, rhythmic clocks, ticking behind ribs that don't know a border from a fence. Put down the pen that marks the 'X' of hate. Instead, offer the small, subversive braveries: th...