eating crayons

what was it about the sullen then,

the cold grayscale of it,

the idea of vast space in the mind of a child,

memory denying me colour,

the capacity to know it, taste it.

i’ve never known the many ways

of looking at a thing, not even the thing itself,

never ate crayons, never befriended crows,

always believing in every single narrative heard,

like a fish, holding the thought briefly

until the next one, and the next one,

so that every testimonial, every photograph,

every analogy, misspelt text,

every bibliography, witnessing,

from the (un)dead, not there,

all these true and alive, even briefly:

a minute of midnight, a day, maybe six,

maybe not have happened.

Clifton’s work appears in Obsidian, +doc, ANMLY, Prism, Glassworks, the87press, Africa39, Manchester Review, 20.35, Harvard Divinity Journal, Poetry Foundation, The Gonjon Pin and Other Stories, AfroSF, Sunspot Jungle, PEN America.