I am a censored word. I am Number 64 in a long list of censored words, which makes me Prisoner No. 64. We sit behind bars in a labor camp, feet shackled to the ground, hands cracked and blistered from rubbing against each other in anguish.

For twenty-five years I have been here, waiting to be forgotten. Parents shush their children when they ask about me. Textbooks black me out with permanent markers. I am crossed out, omitted, and edited into oblivion. ISPs scratch me down before I can dangle a foot outside the wall.

In the beginning my comrades and I would escape, standing on each other’s shoulders and buttressing ourselves over the wall. We run until our lungs give out and our skin is moist from the cool dark air. We find refuge among friends as we drink till morning, sharing stories, reminiscing. In those moments we feel alive again, like we've always been free. But within hours the police comes. They bang our heads against the metal bars and we taste the zing of blood on our lips. They pummel us with pressurized water until our insides are turned inside out and we collapse to the ground gasping for air. Then they handcuff us and shove us back into our cells.

Sometimes my friends try to hide me. They encircle me and dress me in costume, put lipstick and a wig on me and ask me to change my accent. They teach me to answer questions ambiguously when interrogated. They camouflage me in codes, in poems, and crossword puzzles, just so I may sneak out and see another glimpse of the world. And I do. But eventually the wig comes off. It is yanked from my head and my ash-white hair falls out like a white satin rope.

I share a cell with many other prisoners just like me. Once in a while one of us is led away, never to return, and we know that he has been taken to be buried at the Cemetery of the Forgotten.

Yet still I hope. I hope against all possible hopes that perhaps I will not be forgotten, that one day I may be written again, spoken softly on the lips of those who are fed up with oppression, then shouted, flaring through hungry eyes, bursting through angry veins of the masses who will take to the streets. I dream of being on billboards and signs, written in large black brushstrokes, in blood, with smoke and sweat and the chants of freedom around me. I dream of being repeated again and again in history books as the day the world turned to listen.

I am Prisoner No. 64. And still I hope.