Chalk

When they want their way but don’t want to explain themselves,

they try to appeal to order and shout down resisters.

But fear and bluster can only go so far

before people have had enough. And then,

they simply won’t put up with them any longer.

____________________________________________________

Order enforced by fear vanishes in a puff of chalk dust.

____________________________________________________

Chalk

The classroom was not built for forums. The desks pressed too close together, the fluorescent lights buzzed too loud, the walls closed in. Still the parents gathered, summoned by the board chair to “restore order.” The chairman stood at the blackboard, chalk raised like a baton. His blazer tugged at the seams. “Rules,” he said. “That’s why we’re here. Rules must be respected.”

A student—thin, pale, trembling—fidgeted in her seat. She had asked why books were banned, why funding was cut. The audience of teachers and parents had fallen silent. Now the chair was confronting her. Though she was afraid, she would not back down. “May I finish?” she asked.

He ignored her, turned toward the blackboard, scrawled ORDER in block letters, underlined it twice. Then he turned back to the podium, pounded his gavel, and bellowed, “Order! Order!” even though there was no disorder in the room.

The girl laid her notes on the desk, her hands shaking, and continued. “The problem is not order. The problem is silence. When you squash voices, when you disappear books everyone knows exist—”

While she was speaking, he took the chalk back to the blackboard and tried to write ORDER again. The chalk splintered. Dust puffed up from his hand, billowing in the fluorescent light. He barked, “Enough! This is not academic debate.”

The audience began to squirm, clear their throats, adjust themselves in their seats. The girl did not stop. “You can’t disappear truth. You can’t erase memory.”

His face reddened. He lunged forward, raised the gavel, and slammed it on the podium again. The second strike was even more absurd than the first. “Be quiet or I will have you removed.”

She looked around at the audience, then took up her notes again. She read from the banned book list, her voice unsteady but insistent. When he tried to shout her down, he sucked in some of the chalk dust. He coughed, returned to the blackboard, and raised another piece of chalk, but again it snapped in two. The stub fell from his fingers. He inhaled more dust and coughed more violently.

“Let her finish,” an audience member said. Parents and teachers folded their arms, exchanged glances, set their faces.

He ignored them, coughing harder, and took up the gavel again. He pounded it some more, but the audience began to chant, “Let her speak.” The girl read on, more confidently now.

The chairman held the gavel in mid-air. His shoulders sagged. For a moment he looked small, as though he knew no one believed him. Rage burned on his face, but his body folded forward. He slammed the gavel once more, scraped up his papers, and sprinted out of the room.

The door slammed shut behind him. For a moment no one moved. Then someone reached for the eraser, and with one slow stroke wiped ORDER off the blackboard. The chalk dust lifted and fell, thin as ash.

The gavel lay forgotten on the podium.