Nathan C. Thomas
scientists at equations, all trying to solve the mystery of my flesh and hue. When night would come, and with it closing, they would retreat to their own homes where they drew curtains and shut doors against all darkness and strangers’s eyes. Standing forward and alone, I am no home. Until a day he gave me that dark look it took a moment to recognize. He meant to make Africans of them all with robbery. To think of it now, he must have been a guard, or known someone who had security codes; the gates at either end of the hallway did not descend when he removed me, slowly lifted me off the back of the wall. Tilted for a moment at this angle, I saw for the first time the high arcs of the white ceiling and the low shadowy gaps between them in the vaulted heights. With a thought I was down, and it took a while, many pictures past, before a staircase and door brought me to it: the black net of sky with lights showing through gaps in the weave. And the greatest light: perfectly round and full, like me, with child or food. Africa cannot be all dark and forests. Some lands must be open to the light air. Delighted, finally free, I ran the rooftops. Leaping the distance, I made my way fast, heading to a shelter I could make home. Until a bullet let air out of the left thigh and both lungs and I was pitched forward. I toppled and fell, skidding across the gravelly roof, feet from where he lay unconscious on his stomach, awaiting chains, my makers, my design failing me for the second time. Now I too am caught and, again, am returned, hung, glass crowding me. I bear it. I think of the hundred worlds between past and present: the worlds I passed through thin as a ghost and bent
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