Dear Likely Non-Voter,
as I write this postcard to you,
trying to find just the right words
to convince you to vote,
as I slow down my hand 
to be legible in passing to you 
the information you might need 
to get your ballot, 
fill it properly, 
send it on time,
I try to picture your hands 
taking this piece of thin cardboard 
from your mailbox,
your eyes scanning my lines.

Perhaps you are older than me.
Maybe your fingers with swollen joints shake
as you close your eyes.
Sometimes simply staying alive,
holding yourself together 
takes so much work,
it is hard to spare any effort 
to attend to the world 
outside the familiar room. 

Perhaps you are younger. 
Your lips, still retaining the plumpness
of your recent childhood,
twist wryly: 
here is yet another so-called adult
trying to tell you what is the right thing to do.
One of all those people
who for decades have been making a mess of things.
Now they turn to you with hope in their eyes,
now they proclaim: “It is up to you to fix the world.” 

Perhaps with a single glance 
at my wording, my handwriting, my name
you guess 
that I look, sound, live differently
from yourself, 
from the people you hold closest to your heart. 

The thread that connects us
is so thin, as to be invisible.
As I touch it, I am not sure
whether it has the strength
to transmit the meaning 
without breaking. 

Put my postcard aside.

Find your own words
that will convince you:
your decision matters,
it is worth your while 
to not be silent, to take part
in creating the news 
that will meet us the next day.
                        

Our silences
stack one inside another 
like matryoshka dolls.
Yesterday’s unsaid words 
fit into the hollows
of today’s evasions.
And they, in turn,
will fill tomorrow’s shell.

Day after day,
the lacquered face 
appears the same — 
round, rosy-cheeked 
and smiling brightly.

Yet larger.

Each time larger 
than before.