Sighted

Written By Kwesi D.

No amount of uproar could stop the inevitable; not even the most gargantuan of sacrifices could halt the sweeping change. And the priestess, the most revered of her set, could neither intercede with the ancestors, nor contemplate what she had seen after emerging from the pathway between the two worlds. It was already written. She sat flat on the ground trembling and muttering, while her apprentices chanted low incantations and dabbed sweat from her brow. There was no explanation she could satisfy the elders with now. It was laid plainly before her like roasted meat on a banana leaf: The daughters of their nation, all changed somehow; with demeanors not like any of the women she had known. They seemed to be in another dimension, at some future time, wearing peculiar garments and speaking in tongues. Still, her powers only afforded her the ability to watch them through her diminishing portal, moving about them in the shadows.














Their aspirations bring them floating to me in slow-motion, defenseless metals as they are to my massive magnet. And every year it is the same. Alas, this is my second function, my unintended purpose; to be a canvas, to be laid out and sacrificed to their ambitiousness, their furious need to be counted deep from inside the aluminum. Blood drains down my walls in every color. Declarations they spew on me of what they are and could possibly be. Proclamations they paint on me in this perilous outside studio, where blinking lights could bring an even quicker end to our quick nighttime association; our brief exchange. We build some sort of hope together and I complete our contract with my wide, wide morning display. The rising beams will finally reach me and their names will shine with a magnificence that cannot be matched.

Photography by Ian N'Kosi Joseph. Words by Kwesi D. © 2009.

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