if I wrote to you a family story you would want to know how we relate – you and I. are you white? does it interest you that I am a bit white? everyone finds familiarity familial
but I – I disappoint everyone I know – expectation is a currency squandered on a crowd
everyone is a bit white. white blood cells are all we have to protect us clear and seminal and cyclical like God
growing and growing until cancers appear a joke that google cannot erase though she would like to I am told
white cells protect me, I am told, until only a few go wrong
only a few go wrong and yet the system shuts down down goose and suck and freckled skin
a farmhouse where we met elders who grimace at my skin familiarity is familial
my smell the Derbyshire moors alive in my dreams bird watching
bukhoor filling the air to draw out the pheasants like blood flowering lacelike in syringes
starlight from glass lanterns dotting the hills meeting Jane and Emily and asking to be friends
skies dyed black with HIV oud on the breeze
disorder heathery downs and historical contingencies
poppy asked if she could call me susan I’ve yet to meet her again
all they wanted was to be good people
and benevolence is an act only God can without critique
and even then we ask why god why
I don’t want to see the wisdom behind each death that follows me
I am Moses but urgent trailing after Khidr
if I knew the future I’d cherish it and share it on facebook
and change the world with it
I believe in an interventionist God.
Sumaya Kassim
Sumaya Kassim is a writer, curator and critic based in Birmingham, UK. She writes fiction and critical essays on art and culture and speaks regularly at universities, art galleries and museums about decolonising histories and the power of storytelling. She is working on a creative non-fiction project on autoimmunity as well as her first novel. She has Yemeni, Iraqi and English heritage. She tweets @SFKassim.