youth in Asia

transactional, like all the anger turned inward. all the madness set fire, relational, the tragedy of perceptions. everything good is a secret, I don’t need your emails when you ain’t saying anything to me anyway. it’s been 5 months, which feels like a long time and I’m still stabbing at the air. I couldn’t make you pay.

life is building like a song, layered gaining strength even in the signatures without a beat, perhaps growing ever taller despite the absence of sound. life is sometimes careful in the spotlight, at times careful in the dark. life, the absence of notation. this is what you feel when you don’t know what it is to feel anymore, dead chest empty.

all passions dismissed. hiding at the starting line. going to run anyway, having to run anyway. words all run away. no more to say, my jaws broken. fingers in cuffs. eyes stuck open watching your new talk show. I’m not afraid to swallow those pills, if I had them, I would swallow them all, save that promise at the end of that choice. save for that impulse, adding an always. and another and another, always. say it like all truths dismissed. all the truth from your vigilante tongue. telling me I deserve this, spilling those pills into my arms

“without a fact, printed in ink, a chart or a graph, assumptions prove deadly, all bad photography” — -the curious failings of Bret Marston Hall

art credit: Thread, 2012. Acrylic, charcoal, pastel, color pencil and Xerox transfers on paper, 132 x 132 cm — — — — Njideka Akunyili Crosby (Nigerian, born 1983),