A Working Party
They were instructed early:
Scrub the body.
Tame the hair.
Harden the frame with iron.
Smooth the voice.
Be patient.
Obedience, they were told, would be rewarded.
So they laboured.
Steam in tiled rooms before dawn.
Steel plates clashing like dull artillery.
Mirrors reporting every flaw.
They chiselled themselves into something
almost acceptable.
They studied manuals of charm,
filed down anger to a tolerable edge,
learned to laugh on cue.
They treated desire like a campaign—
discipline, repetition, endurance.
A future was sketched for them:
a door with light behind it,
a ring laid on a table,
small shoes by the stairs.
They marched toward it
in pressed shirts and polished shoes.
But the door did not open.
No trumpet.
No verdict.
Only silence that lengthened
like a trench without end.
Elsewhere, life paired easily,
unrehearsed,
effortless as breathing.
They mistook that ease
for betrayal.
No shells fell here—
only the slow attrition of hope.
Rejection without spectacle.
Loss without witness.
They had prepared for a world
that did not recognise the contract.
And when the lights of the gym went out
and the streets emptied,
they stood in their careful armour,
faces scrubbed raw,
waiting for orders
that never came.
They were instructed early:
Scrub the body.
Tame the hair.
Harden the frame with iron.
Smooth the voice.
Be patient.
Obedience, they were told, would be rewarded.
So they laboured.
Steam in tiled rooms before dawn.
Steel plates clashing like dull artillery.
Mirrors reporting every flaw.
They chiselled themselves into something
almost acceptable.
They studied manuals of charm,
filed down anger to a tolerable edge,
learned to laugh on cue.
They treated desire like a campaign—
discipline, repetition, endurance.
A future was sketched for them:
a door with light behind it,
a ring laid on a table,
small shoes by the stairs.
They marched toward it
in pressed shirts and polished shoes.
But the door did not open.
No trumpet.
No verdict.
Only silence that lengthened
like a trench without end.
Elsewhere, life paired easily,
unrehearsed,
effortless as breathing.
They mistook that ease
for betrayal.
No shells fell here—
only the slow attrition of hope.
Rejection without spectacle.
Loss without witness.
They had prepared for a world
that did not recognise the contract.
And when the lights of the gym went out
and the streets emptied,
they stood in their careful armour,
faces scrubbed raw,
waiting for orders
that never came.
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