Poem: The Cannibalising Of The Other

At the border lines
The transition between two worlds
I developed an agitation; a hunger
To devour anything

Devouring is reasserting agency
Devouring is deciding who to become
Devouring is a dissociative departure
To absorb a fiction
To which one does not belong

Home was not safe. It was not stable.
I was petrified. There was violence
And land from which I was uprooted
A home from which I was expulsed
Afraid, insecure, not knowing

The open road became the only place
Where the two irreconcilable parts collided
The open road, as identity.

The open road, the car, the cold
The anguish, the late nights, an accident
Prohibitions, unworthiness, emptiness

A child does not understand
A child does not understand

The police, a notion of illegality, of trespassing
An illegal love, a foreign object
Shame

A partition of the mind
A hesitation in speech
How could I be anything else than
The anguish of transition

The open road is empty
The open is empty

In liminal spaces there is
No social structure
No tradition
No stability

There is only fluidity
Movement
Ever changing symbols
Experiments

Juliette Tocino-Smith is a paris-based writer and poet