Absence of Space and Time

A response to Kemang Wa Lehulere’s ‘I cut my skin to liberate the splinter’.

stillness where chaos once abounded

a shout into a void

howled into the spaces and the shambles and the fear that 

strikes when the match is snuffed

the flames rattle and whisper a reckoning

halted by the porcelain of an inherited memory

something that never really was

etchings of chalk onto board

that catches the scratch 

of a memory once whispered

pain does nothing if you don’t inherit it. 

the watchful eyes of the police dogs

and the hiss of the air in the chute

an empty bird box 

spaces that are devoid of all but dust

steady-ordered rows

and emptiness of water

the absence of that which gives life

women with no hands in their jackets

and pillars of community that

actually

are nothing more than the casing of that which they hold up.