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