An unnamed gentleman walks into an all-white room with nothing on his body except a dirty discarded robe, dirt underneath his fingernails, and his skin bruised as if his sins are inked on his skin. The long-faced woman sits at a desk behind two levers, one will lead to his death and the other to his freedom. “Please,” He cries, feeling the voices beneath the floorboards laugh at his anguish and for just a moment the woman looks thoughtful, “Fine, I’ll give you the chance to choose,” She answers his pleas, saying it like she has spoken this same line a million times before. “Wait,” The woman speaks up once more, her cerulean blue eyes on his when he opens his mouth to speak, ”Before you plead your case, let me tell you your crimes.”
Her lips that were once set in a pout draw open to reveal a curl of bitterness on her upper lip. “Your birth was a tidal wave, the recession of water before it came back to erase all that lived. Since the moment you stepped foot on this land you have ripped roots from their homes to create yours. You stomped your feet on the cemented floors you built to hold your inventions and dreams while the vermins burrowed themselves into the forgotten souls underneath your floorboards. The rats made homes in beautiful flowers, as beautiful as your mother was, do you remember your mother?”
“You found a safe haven in the crest of her abdominal, feeding on the fruit that came from her body until her harvest was gone. Your mother gave you beautiful things and you trapped them in glass jars until they suffocated. You took your mothers spine between your sharp fingers and tried to make fortresses out of them. In hopes that these fortresses could withstand the wars you started and the souls that were taken as retribution. You hid her bones in your concert jungle, the plaster stained with the memory of her life but you didn’t count on those memories warping the very ground you walk on. Did you think she would still be breathing when you put the bricks over her flesh? Did you think burying her would make you forget? So, which lever do you choose? Do you think you deserve it? Did she?”
Kenya Burton Poetry 