They Called It a Crime to Feel

Love
Was banned
First

Then laughter
Then tears
Then everything in between

We lived
In a city
Where smiling
Needed a permit

Where heartbeats
Were tracked
Like weapons
In quiet chests

They came
For those who cried
And labeled grief
As a threat

I saw a boy
Arrested
Because his eyes
Refused to lie

He whispered
“I miss her”
Once
And never spoke again

The news said
He vanished
But we knew
What silence meant

We wore
Blank faces
Like uniforms
Nothing too high
Nothing too deep

Even joy
Had a curfew
Even sorrow
Had a price

Some of us
Learned to cry
With our backs
To the wall

To scream
Without breath
To love
In pieces

But there were rebels
Those who still wrote
In dark corners
Of paper hearts

They passed poems
Like weapons
Folded
In cracked palms

We read them
Alone
Each word
A spark beneath the ice

And in that frozen world
Where feeling was forbidden
We knew
Emotion
Was the final form of rebellion