The box said: Tell the truth.
So, she gave it a tick.
It swallowed eight years
with one little click.
No room for the song,
or the war, or the dead;
just YES in its cell
and NO overhead.
The square supposed nothing,
just ink on a page;
but the past stirred behind it—
the court and the cage.
It echoed the judge’s voice,
which called music a crime;
then followed her westward,
without serving time.
It followed her home
in a bureaucrat’s grip,
slept under her passport,
and shadowed each trip.
She papered the bedroom,
chose blue for the wall.
A life can look settled
yet not settle at all.
A friend wrote: Let’s meet.
So, she opened the map.
The box took a pencil
and darkened each gap.
Not here, and not there—
not that airport, that flight;
not the checkpoint at noon,
nor the runway at night.
She searched for one country
whose doors opened wide,
where her friend could enter
and she need not hide.
She studied the treaties,
the borders, the skies;
which stamp meant safe passage,
which welcomes meant lies.
When fortune was with them,
they sat down at last:
two passports together,
two cups raised to the past.
A birthday went missing.
A winter passed through.
A face on her screen said,
I still remember you.
Some people hear iron
and keys at their door.
She has tea in the kitchen,
clean sheets, a safe floor.
She will not call safety
a prison or chain.
But distance has weather,
and exile has rain.
Here, laws ask the hunter
to prove she is prey.
Here, sometimes, a sentence
is sent on its way.
Still the box keeps returning,
small, patient, and square—
at work, at the border,
in each name left there.
It cannot come knocking
or cross through her door;
yet a line on a form
brings the courtroom once more.
And sometimes the box
is exactly its size:
a country made tiny,
disguised as a choice—
two squares on a page,
and no space for a voice.
Audio – The Box
The Box – Author’s Note:
“The Box” was inspired by Olga Borisova’s opinion article, “I Am Wanted by Russia. The Consequences Follow Me Everywhere,” published in The Moscow Times on 20 July 2026. Borisova is a Russian activist and former member of the feminist performance-art group Pussy Riot who now lives in Britain. In the article, she describes how a Russian criminal conviction, imposed in absentia for her participation in an anti-war song, continues to intrude upon the ordinary details of her life in exile.
Olga Borisova: Born in St Petersburg in 1994, Olga Borisova is a Russian activist, writer and former police officer. After leaving the police and becoming involved in opposition activism, she met Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina through their work supporting political prisoners and joined the collective in 2015.
Pussy Riot is a Russian feminist protest and performance-art collective formed in Moscow in 2011. Known for their brightly coloured balaclavas and guerrilla performances combining punk music, political theatre and direct action, they campaign against authoritarianism, political repression and restrictions on women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. The collective gained international attention in 2012 after performing an anti-Putin “punk prayer” inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Its membership has changed over time, and Olga Borisova joined several years after that famous protest.
Court Case: On 15 September 2025, Moscow’s Basmanny District Court convicted five Pussy Riot members in absentia of spreading what the Russian authorities termed “false information” about the armed forces. The charges arose principally from the collective’s December 2022 anti-war video “Мама не смотри телевизор (Mama, Don’t Watch TV),” which referred to the destruction of Mariupol and the massacre at Bucha. Borisova, who was living outside Russia, received an eight-year prison sentence and rejected the prosecution as politically motivated.
Return to the Beginning of the Poem
Go to the following poem in the collection: “The Space Between Time“