We were assigned a space and told to move,
standard quarters, designated by a type.
Sorted neatly by the count of their rooms,
and the precise curtilage enclosing them.

They are meted out to individuals,
never by the number of souls in a family,
but strictly by rank, by status, by score.
I do not know who divided our lives in half.

A mid-level officer with adolescent children,
with ageing parents under his roof,
with relatives visiting season after season,
is crammed into a quarter of fewer rooms.

While an officer at the peak of the hierarchy,
whose parents have long since passed,
whose children have grown and scattered,
who has no kin left to cross his threshold,
inherits a bungalow that only echoes.

What do you call this machine,
that denies substance to those in need?
Hoarding space for the heavily decorated,

inherited rules or a heartless algorithm?

If it is measured in square feet,

but not care how many live in it without losing their dignity,

They would be calling it protocol; you call it entitlement,

I call it a house that forgot how to be a home.

~

Jay Jagdev