Bathroom Graffiti

I'm working against my nature
the habits of my lifetime
to describe without judgment
the men in my imagination
who have sat in the toilet stall
throughout this year.

I've read what the marks left
by them on the stall:
A carved swastika, the word porn,
something about bitches,
an exchange about the sizes
of penises and excrement.

I imagine these men,
they are young enough,
though no longer children,
and their hands are dirty.
Their parents are large,
their homes are cold.

I expect their faces to smirk
as they write these things,
but they are concentrating,
carefully thinking, hoping
that what they write
will be the final words.

And now I smile.
For here we all are,
them with markers
writing on the wall,
me at this keyboard,
all of us hoping

to say the words
that will carry us forward
in the memory of this world
which seems so very large.
We all sit with our pants down
wondering how to be heard.