They do not arrive with books open,
or sleeves rolled for the hard mathematics of truth.
They arrive with one word,
thin as a matchstick,
sharp as something thrown from the back of a classroom.
“Lefty.”
And suddenly the debate is over.
No need to answer the question about hunger,
or why the rich man’s dog eats cleaner meat
than the child beside the station.
No need to explain the smoke climbing from wars
signed by smiling hands in tailored suits.
No need to untangle history,
that long electrical wire
still sparking under our feet.
Just say “lefty”
and the room exhales with relief.
Because names are easier than thought.
Labels fit neatly into pockets.
Arguments do not.
The hater loves shortcuts.
Loves exits marked with insults.
Loves the trapdoor beneath complexity.
Call someone “lefty,”
“dreamer,”
“woke,”
anything that folds a human being
into a cartoon shape.
Then you never have to meet their eyes.
You never have to admit
that compassion is inconvenient,
that empathy rearranges furniture in the mind,
that fairness asks difficult questions
and waits for difficult answers.
Hatred fears debate
the way moths fear daylight.
It survives in slogans,
in chants shouted over microphones,
in comment sections foaming like poisoned rivers.
It survives where nobody listens.
Because real debate
requires a dangerous thing,
the possibility of being changed.
And those who worship certainty
would rather burn libraries
than move one inch from themselves.
So they throw words like stones.
“Lefty.”
A tiny word attempting to bury
entire landscapes of thought.
But language remembers.
The teachers remember.
The workers remember.
The poets remember.
Every quiet soul who ever asked,
“Could this world be kinder than this?”
They remember.
And somewhere tonight,
beneath fluorescent lights humming like tired bees,
a student raises a trembling hand
to ask a forbidden question.
Not left.
Not right.
Just human.
And that question
is heavier than every insult
thrown to silence it.
JH
Julan62 