100 Days Filming Her City’s Annihilation
It’s been a century
of days since she
started hunting back.
She teeters under dangling
roofs, in land so stunning
God goes there to smoke
at sunset. She takes
her lens and turns over
tatters of her neighbours’
bloodstained brickwork,
stalking for the shot
that will build the skyline back.
“Look”, she says, at the fly
overhead that unfurls
a blanket of falling fire.
“Look”, she says, at the hospital
floor where a kid with a rocketship
nappy lies, one leg streaked with rust
and ash and one clean cast
where his knee used to be.
“Look”, she says, speaking miles
of loss in the words of the people
paying for the drones that flattened
and scorched her home. And we,
the imperial core, watch on
like a knife just sliced a finger,
in the moment before the blood
and pain, when every atom
holds its breath, knowing
what’s on the way.
Our carnage folded time,
kept catastrophe emerging.
Our future lies with theirs,
somewhere tangled in the rubble.
What power we might find,
if we searched for it together. Until
it’s found, the acid red that sweetens
watermelon will permanently stain
the soil of each one of our lands.