Seeing Through the Colonial Body

 To meet you I travel the colonial core  

  Find you alive in the belly of our captor

  Body bent but breathing warped like the reflection in a foggy mirror

 — 

     To spend more life beyond your lands and waters than on your shore

     A destiny? A prophecy? A punishment?

     Is this the fate of your people

 — 

  My body survives by shrinking

  Dying is easy here 

  Living in these organs, cramped quarters

  The more I see, the larger I grow

  I can’t stop it

  Intestines too small to call passageways

 — 

     I want to answer your call

 — 

  Eager to relearn your rhythms

  To move, bend, jump, stomp

  Dance

  Pray with my feet on earthen soils

  I need only learn the drums’ beats

  Soon I’ll find their names 

  And know each by heart

 — 

     The songs haven’t changed here

 — 

   To learn is to know

   i sit here incomplete 

   Eyes wide 

   Peering 

A gaze returned across the Atlantic