Live in a windowless room long enough
and you will forget how to leave.
Life will be splashed out on the walls,
but nowhere else,
and you will wonder what would scratch the surface.
When it becomes too difficult to walk
you take to the ground,
but it is mostly too cold
and hurts your knees.
But it is in this room that you read love poems to your mother
and she explains the words you don’t understand.
Where there are no speakers of a language left,
what remains is less than a silence.
What is this love if not saying yes,
your knees making noise,
you standing up.
Artwork Courtesy of Youssef ElNahas
For more context on the poem, go here https://rowayat.org/context-note-for-walpole-island/
