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:

the shared umbrella in a sudden, drumming downpour,

the "good morning" tossed like a coin into the quiet,

the hand extended across the garden wall

where the ivy grows, oblivious to the party lines.

For fear is a ghost that starves when we refuse to scream.

Kindness is the only language that requires no passport,

the only policy that leaves the table full.

Let us be the ones who mend the map with light,

until the only thing we are 'on the list' for

is the simple, human mercy of being known