David Anson Lee

Smugglers of Small Things

We carry the quiet contraband:
salt sealed in matchboxes,
photographs that forget their faces,
a hymn folded into a receipt.

At the checkpoint, the guard asks
what we are moving across.

We say: weather.
We say: grief in manageable units.
We say: nothing that will survive inspection.

He laughs and lets us pass,
because laughter is not on the list.

Beyond the road, the desert edits us.
Names fall off like excess luggage.

One of us becomes a translator for dust,
another learns to speak in radio static,
another simply forgets which side they came from
and calls it freedom.

At night we open our coats
and find only more border.

Still, we keep walking.
Still, something insists on being carried.

David Anson Lee is a poet, philosopher, and physician trained at Boston University, Mayo Clinic, and Harvard who has worked across medicine, philosophy, and literary arts, with publications in journals including Right Hand Pointing, Eunoia Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and others. Born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and currently based in Texas, his work explores liminal identity, illness, ethics, and transformation at the borders of body and language.