Otherness isn’t beautiful,
it smells like dagga and curry
and litter,
one colonial house next to another
and then empty eyes, unblinking, intoxicated
with generational trauma.
I just found out seals torpedo in the water
and drift on their backs
gasping for air in rhythmic twirls,
their skin uncountried, slick with freedom,
what a slippery feeling, that of knowing where you belong.
Then there’s the seven
course menu, consisting of white guilt and
charred animals, locally sourced, respectful
of the land and the oceans surrounding us.
Very delicious, we say to the servers whose
accent we barely understand. You never
understand otherness, really.
“Are they ever happy,” I ask you. “No
one’s happy,” you reply. “I mean, can you be happy
without a sense of identity attached to yourself. Do they have that?”
“I guess they still suffer.” That’s as close
to the truth we can get.
All I see is this lingering darkness. Otherness
is nonchalantly cruel to the colonial mind. It does what
it has to.
