I choose to be

a placemaker,

an architect

whose only materials

are a rise in the voice

and a pile of words –

broken, orphaned little things

that ignorant people call lies.

Ignorant people who cannot feel

the difference between potential and

progress, who see no use for second

chances. I refuse to build labyrinthine

palaces for the many-mouthèd gods with more

words than they know how to wield. I will not carve

monuments of stagnant ideologies out of a precious and

dwindling resource. I will write in rooms and windows –

simple, but strong; so when the forces of time and chaos

come to claim their ransom, I can walk away knowing that

even if my practical walls are razed, there will remain a basement,

in which there is preserved, in vinegar or jam, a tiny fig of honesty.