I know I should feel something,

but I don’t, I really don’t.

No epiphany.

Long ago and far away, in times

long bent away from the now

of living not in their world,

but in this white mine,

digging for riches where

there’s none to be found.

 

I live among signposts colourless

and neatly formed, so what

has all this to do with me?

Me, looking at the pale face of

white guilt, and thinking of times

long gone, times

when they took them away,

exclusion, 1967, genocide, and

finding a way,

what way I say, on repeat?

 

You should feel something,

they say, packaged across fields

with microphones and ceremonies,

and welcoming speeches

in school halls and civic spaces

meant to capture something

that is hard to find in the white noise,

for there are minds and hearts

that do not know, that have

not seen, that will not hear,

untouched.

 

There is distance,

tyranny,

like this land;

there is truth,

numbness,

and there is fear.

 

10/9/2025