in the Iron Bowl

We were red fish

rotting

inside an iron bowl.

Quiet.

Watched.

Obsessed with a freedom

we were never meant to touch.

We were the deprived—

denied even the right

to imagine the sea.

We floated

in filthy water,

alive,

yet constantly dying of thirst.

We pressed into one another

until we lost our edges.

Until I disappeared

and only we remained.

One body.

One breath.

One soul.

Behind iron walls.

In freezing water.

We screamed for the sea.

Sea.

Sea.

Then the water turned red.

Not from the water.

From us.

From our blood.

From the light they wanted erased.

Some of us were killed.

We were one soul—

and a body without a soul

does not live.

It only moves.

Now look at us.

Mourning.

Beaten.

Drowning in blood.

We roll

in the blood of those

who were us.

The water smells wrong.

It smells like death

that refuses to end.

We are soulless.

We are breathing.

We do not exist.

We are dead.

And those who died

for freedom—

they are the only ones

still alive.

How cruel.

How cowardly

to kill fish

and call it order.

How cruel

to steal our soul

and leave us breathing.

Now we are only

pieces

of something that is gone.

Nothing remains

but voices.

But screams.

But the word freedom

echoing with no bodies left to carry it.

O fish sick of iron bowls—

did you reach the endless sea?

O red fish of the road to freedom—

your road does not die.

We are one soul.

You live

inside our bodies,

inside our wounds.

Your dream is our pain.

Your absence will finish us.

O fish of the boundless sea—

on the day freedom finally arrives,

where

do we search for you?