Where walls once stood I walk,
I walk with purpose past
near-broken homes, edges sharp with resentment,
nothing but words holding them ever so tenuously together.
I move through invisible structures of
concrete to my home, a home once inhabited
by a resistor
or a poet
or more likely a poor family, asleep in my closet, in my kitchen,
the space between my table and chair.
I walk the line, the line drawn on the pavement to remind us that,
here, a wall once stood, a wall that split human from human,
a wall that could have split me from you.
I walk the line, I walk the line from here to Palestine,
a line made of
barbed wire and
hearts broken
a wall made of ideas,
of lost hope,
of pain.
I walk the line between anger and pity,
pity for the chances of birth, that separate
soldier from boy
white from black
one from another
me from you.
I walk a line that is well-trodden by
those who wring their hands and ask
“why can’t we all just get along?”
I am one of them,
born on the wrong side of the wall as empathy,
born on the side where to feel is a privilege,
to love is in isolation,
to hurt is another man’s game.
But our structural integrity is weak, we are
crumbling, pushed down by the thronged masses tired of our tyranny of
standing there
oblivious
saying nothing.
Where walls still stand, I walk.
Pace with anger, but
hope too.
Knowing that these walls can’t stand forever, that
someday they’ll be torn down.
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