Fragmentation
That it was not my legs that led me to this imagination,
not my fingers, not the flipping
of brown pages but a song, the solemn sound of guitars.
Hollow woods crossed with strings.
Were I born in the 18th century I probably would have
been a slave. But here I am in the 21st, still surrounded
by the music of blood. The musician is singing.
Silence begs to be returned back to its mouth.
Yet through the song,
I imagine the hall where the Berlin Conference was held.
The chandelier hanging above in the way rebel slaves were hung.
I imagine the hall filled with blue-eyed men.
The knife of their greed pointing to my ancestral land.
In a telling, we either begin where it hurts most
or where it hurts less.
but in the recollection of history, I do not know where to begin.
The wounds are all exact in their sting. And I imagine
them splaying Africa on a table. Their greed—sharp
like the air in a mourning house—cuts through it, stripping
us naked. A man rising to share its pieces.
Nigeria goes to Britain, Congo to France.
Brother, if this song comes to you too, in the graceful light
of dawn, when flowers lift their petals in ethereal ascension,
listen to it. Point to the place where truth lies open—that we
were once together, undivided, rooted in blood and love.