Your Air

You are more than dungeon doors,
than the jail guard who pretends
not to hear prisoners whispering
and scrawling into stone walls
promises of change
they’ve claimed to carve
a hundred times before.

You are not defined by tearlessness
and the unchipped masks of theatre
that preach a character like silver
cuffs at a high-society networking dinner
where the food is too expensive for you
to claim that it swells your throat dry.

Windowless rooms can hold words like flies
with the buzzing of wings you cannot hear
but seem to realise is there, like superstition
about shoes on a table in a different room
and the smell of unwashed dishes
that has just killed a spider.

You are hearth fire
and a change in the weather
to which prisoners ending their term
and those of expensive taste should adjust
their need of an umbrella for
rather than holding head in rain
or sunburn and pretending to be unfazed
by the whispers of insects that linger
upon your air.