I hope you know that this is foreign land.
I hope you know that when the men and women of home told me,
“You are a fool to dream”, I grew to despise their voices.
That when they told me travel was ludicrous, black was sin, and I a devil because I was a 12 year old autistic child,
I grew to despise their land.
It was not my land, I’d say. It was theirs. It was their rotting green, their putrid sand, La Isla Del Encanto.

I hope you know that this is foreign land.
I hope you know that when I left the Island, I left that house.
It was all I knew; the house, el pueblo. The men who saw me with hungry eyes. The moriviví sprouting from the wood. The church whose women scorned me.
The grave my father slept in.

I hope you know it was a terrible thing, the bone thrown at me, the thing I had to eat because nobody knew to give me meat.
Marrow. The only love I’ve ever known.

You must know. This is foreign land.
This place you call free, this place with flag blood-stained and heavy.
This place I cannot seem to breathe in, where I cannot sit without first buying coffee even if my voice cannot come out, where my head is wanted because my mind is a darkened white, my skin is muddied by race, my eyes are black, black like your wood deer and owl– and I hear the voices of the men and women from home who learned from the white man to say— black is sin.
My skin was made to be loved by the sun, my nails were grown from the bark of the tree en los montes. I am carved from the stories my teacher told me of los Taínos, and slashed with the lesson that Cristobal Colón was a man to be celebrated.

I hope you know your land is foreign.
I hope you know your flag is bloodied.
I hope you know that when I stand on your soil, my body knows

it is not free.

Mortimer World

What does it sound like in Mortimer World?
Peaceful silence unless monotonous repetition,
The whir of modern trains,
Overhead planes,
The buzz of buses,
Replayed phrases,
From life, television characters,
Platform announcements,
And scheduled stops,
Doors now closing,
Mind the gap,
This train terminates,
This train is comprised of four coaches,
Lights off lights on,
Go to sleep,
No singing Daddy.

What does it look like in Mortimer World?
A blur of images,
That hold no importance,
Unless they make themselves known,
Through the fog.
Like numbers and logos,
But not shapes and letters,
Lights and buttons ignite like beacons in the gloom,
Attraction and distraction,
Obsession or possession?
Familiar faces bring rare illumination,
Breaking through his guarded imagination.
Buses drive their numbers and routes,
More familiar than letters and words.
Everything in its place
Everything at its pace

What does it feel like in Mortimer World?
The cool of die cast models
The smooth swipe of fingertips on glass screens
The vibration of different textured pavements
Through the toe of a shoe
The exhilaration of lighting up the correct sequence of buttons in the communal lifts
Fingers working like a pianist's
A blur over digits
Brain-crashing fear at something misplaced
All out terror and the change of a brand
Unbridled fright of the week day morning routine
No red clothes no yellow clothes
They signal educational regime
Burning panic from scalp to sole
Endless school torture
With no parental role
Though the heat cools with the two women he knows
It's not Mum and Dad and the freedom he knows

We are all still babies
Who want to be swaddled and safe
Different methods and comforters which we use to seek bliss
Our feelings contained, huddled and curled
Our planets aren't so different
From Mortimer World