Understanding Power

The council hall smells of mop water
and things that dry overnight.
Stacked chairs.
A screen.
A jug of tap water
wearing three lemon slices like earrings.
On the table:
Sign-in sheet.
Name stickers.
Sharpies.
Biscuits in a plastic tub
that crack like old plaster.
The slide lights up:
“Understanding Power”.
No caps lock.
White text on soft teal.
Kind colours for hard news.

We fill in forms.
Tick your race.
Tick your sex.
Tick your class.
There is no box for
“has all his teeth
and a boringly kind father”.
I write that in the margin.
The woman next to me
raises one eyebrow.
I sit there:
privileged,
well fed,
middle class white man,
tucked-in shirt,
intact molars,
student loan nearly gone.
A walking pie chart of luck.

The trainer clicks the remote.
Two columns appear.
Left: hurt.
Right: harm.
The room tilts a little
toward the left.
Please stand if you belong
to an advantaged group.
My chair coughs on the carpet.
Four of us walk to the wall,
each with a folding chair
held like a mild crime.
We line up under the fire exit sign.
We look like a support group
for men who arrived early
to the wrong seminar.

The others stay in the centre.
A ring of listeners.
Stories of slurs,
of job interviews that never called back,
of hands on knees in dark cars.
Each story lands on my chest
and sits there.
I am sorry these things happened.
I am not sorry in bulk.
My sorrow has my name on it.
My guilt does too.

The trainer smiles in our direction.
Today we rebalance the room.
Those who once had more
will feel less.
Those who had less
will feel more.
I picture a sheet.
Tabs for race,
tabs for sex,
tabs for class.
Columns of pain.
Totals in red.
A filter that sends me
to the “penalty” tab
before I open my mouth.
My crimes:
Born in a quiet suburb.
Parents stayed married.
Never followed by security
in a shopping centre.
Teeth straight enough
to ignore.
I will not pretend
these cards are nothing.
Luck weighed in my favour
from the start.
Still, the bruises in this room
do not match my hands.

We split into groups.
A new slide:
“Design a fair system”.
One man sketches higher fences
round certain schools.
Someone suggests job slots
that never go to people
who look like me
for the next fifty years.
A woman draws a seesaw.
On one end: a pile of men
in navy blazers.
On the other: one girl in a hoodie,
arms crossed,
staring us down.
In my group I draw a long table.
No head.
No children’s corner.
Name plates flipped over
so you read the person,
not the category.
In the centre of the table
I draw a shredder
eating the forms we filled.
No one in my group laughs.
One man taps the shredder
with his pen.
The tap is small
and careful,
like knocking on a door
you half expect to open.

We read our plans out loud.
The room claps for fences,
for bans,
for the long-awaited sting.
The trainer calls this justice
with training wheels.
Everyone looks at us
against the wall.
I think of my daughters,
brown-haired,
car-seat arguments,
school shoes in the hall.
One day a room like this
may queue them with me
for a job turned down
before their names are read.

I want the laws changed.
I want old boys’ clubs dissolved,
pay gaps shut,
idiot bosses sacked.
I will sign the letters.
I will hand over seats,
money,
time,
power.
I will not carry a stranger’s whip
so someone can hit me with it
for practice.
Your scars are real.
My luck is real.
Your pain is not my invoice.

The session ends.
We hand in our lanyards
to a woman who looks tired
in a kind way.
Outside, the car park is dark.
Rain starts in neat small drops
over every roof.
No chart.
No columns.
Each drop lands
on the first thing it meets,
then slides off,
looking for a drain
that works.

F.S.F