Asylum
I am not a refugee.
The word alone leaves a bad taste in my mouth, the same way it clearly does in his, this young man pontificating in an angry half-whisper to those closest to him, who clearly wish they had chosen a different seatmate. He is not even supposed to be here, he says, not hiding his tone of despair. He has a fiance, a dog, a blog, a garden, a life. No one here can say any different, but they don’t say. What for? We are all stuck with each other in this floating husk of a ship, which moves at a matronly pace through the water, as if she knows there is nowhere we need to be or to go.