I plead for possession

my brother and I leave his house for some time to be together and breathe. at the portrait gallery we’re caught off guard by the work of an artist reimagining the stolen land on which we’ve grown. past collage and paintings and plastic printed sculptures we walk through a wasteland of greed in which the skies and waters run a toxic neon green. in this world, the colonial project is a masquerade of headless birds and beauty products. the visitors use laser beams and poison to brand the land their own. the people parade the treeless plains with flowers they have stolen. nets are vacuums of exotic fish and butterflies. they give their own names to everything they see: a new language spoils the harmony curated by those that lived here first. we read the titles of the paintings. there’s mention of dreams and possession and we start to talk about what it means to really own something.

I board the bus back home and think about the fallacy of ownership in a world where everything returns to dust. the ones that stole and claimed these seas and mountains for themselves assume possession of a land that is not and never has been theirs. on my own I colonise every breath between dreams with the diseased urge to assume possession of control of who I am and where I’m going. in the face of the fact that all I will ever be and see amounts to no more sense than sandcastles, I plead for possession of what I will never understand.

last night I saw your face again. you came to see me perform but I don’t remember what. after the show and in the morning we walked down streets I walk alone to the store or the station to take me someplace else. you held my hand once but that was all. we couldn’t say what we wanted, though you knew how I felt. the morning you were leaving I had to go to work. on the train I nearly missed I cried into my screen knowing I’d never see your face again.

my brother asks me what I think about love. I tell him I lack faith in everything I used to think I knew about anything. we talk about time and investing in what should matter when nothing really lasts. I think about you and what I can do to try to forget. maybe we can choose what we love, but not what we dream. in the day I can try to control where and how I lose my time: if only I could say the same at night. on a land that isn’t mine I am possessed by dreams and everything I can’t control.