Day Twenty-four

Today's words:

Whiteboard

Reform

Russia

Warehouse

Bead

Cafe

The teacher wiped clean the.whiteboard

And wrote one word large: REFORM

"What does this word mean to you, children of Russia?"

She asked. Anya, whose parents were stuffed away in some warehouse

Somewhere, turned the hard bead

Of her gaze forward. "Does it mean my parents can open a cafe?"

The teacher wrote the word cafe

On the whiteboard.

"What else?" she pursued. 'Or is that a bead

"In your head instead of a brain? This is real reform.

"Not just a restocking of the warehouse

"But change for all of Russia."

Ah, yes, Russia:

Where a girl can dream of opening a cafe

Although her parents are imprisoned in a warehouse

Of "undesirables," and a teacher uses a whiteboard

To preach reform

While a firing squad draws a bead

On an innocent man. As sweat begins to bead

On his brow he cries out, "Russia!

"All I ever wanted was to reform

"Your system. To go into a cafe

"Like any other person and share my knowledge using a whiteboard

"Instead of being confined in a warehouse."

For they were quite the talented group in that warehouse:

A university professor, a poet, a bead

Designer, a doctor. Their names not noted on any whiteboard

Or even mentioned in conversation in Russia.

In the cafe

All anyone talked of was reform.

Do you think reform

Is possible in a country that saw fit to warehouse

Some of its most brilliant citizens? To ban them from their cafe,

While they clutched their hope like the bead

Of a rosary, praying that Russia

Would efface the whiteboard

Of its wrongheaded "reform?" Hold onto that bead

Of hope that you'll be freed from the warehouse, that Russia

Will re-open the cafe and let the professor return to the whiteboard.