things we

A Thousand Sunsets Spent Stranded At Sea

Artwork by Pavlina Bargili

Papa said to me
they can’t ever take what’s inside my mind;
the blossoms of trees that took root
one hundred and seventy five years ago,
planted from the smuggled seeds of misspelled letters.

He said,
dey could take yuh clothes.
dey could take yuh money.
dey could come wit’ dey blade an’ dey poison
an’ dey could strip you bare.
but you know why dey will hate you, chile?
because dey will never be able to loot yuh mind
de way dey loot we people.
an’ dey will despise you so much for it.

So Papa says to keep on,
and to fill my mind with everything they cannot take.
now I sing the songs of a thousand sunsets
spent stranded at sea.
and I write the words that were planted in my name
and in my head.

And when I hear their hollow echoes
they will call it flattery.
and when they try to conquer this pen
it will be nothing more than thievery
and when they come to colonise this pen
I will remind them of their forgery;
that they will forever be tripping behind
the forces that propel this mind
in their futile attempts to grab
what they will never be able to grasp.

And after I have filled my mind
with everything they cannot take
I will rise out of sea from which I was born
and reclaim the worlds they took from me.

—

Poem by Naila Hess

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