SOAPBOX
ON WHAT WE LEFT BEHIND AND REPLACED IT WITH Over here we spread like leaves. Over here our beauty is not the same beauty. We don’t love the same. The cry: I traveled so far and wept so long just for this? When we were young nobody taught us how to build a home or the tangled art of saying goodbye. So what about the bodies we left behind? Their ghosts are banging at the door. To forget lineage we inherit ways of living that are perfectly unlike our ancestors’; by then the anthem has rewritten the limp tune, becomes an excuse for strangers we meet in hotels asking, “Where are you from?” The look they give when we answer, “Here.” Say if we’re not careful the patriotism might crucify us – please, I swear one day it will. x WORDS by ANON ART by HANAN ABBAS
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