This work is part of TAG: A Poeta Project. It is a response to Karle Norman's The Memory of Me, 2020

“During, After, Before- A response to Karle Norman”

It’s blurry now and all we have

are windows. Walking miles and miles

around furniture and dried blooms.

When I close my eyes I can see

words typed out, smoky hay stacks,

restaurant tables covered

in stiff cloth.

I can see men looking at me.

Their faces the faces of animals,

the first animals to wander

into a newly abandoned town.

My father on the telephone is just a sense-memory:

the sound of eggshell cracking against a spoon.

During and after and before. I have

my north-facing windows

and my south.

One word I see behind

my eyes is necessary, as in,

“You find it necessary to keep

a calendar open beside you at all times.”

When the sirens sound, no one flinches

or pauses or stops. It could be

months. Once, in the back of a taxi,

I laid my head

along the side of a man’s rounded shoulder

and when we arrived I lifted

my suitcase out of the trunk

alone.

By Cheryl Quimba