Shortlisted for the Aesthetica creative writing Award, ‘reclamation’ celebrates the diaspora as a space where newness and creativity are born.

reclamation

We dance in the diaspora,
those spaces between no kinds of places,
in the tight spots in action movies
where the walls close in, slowly;
at the corner shop
where everyone knows everyone
and strobe lights shimmy across
plastic packets of dried salt-fish
and rusting tins of apricots.

We dance in fairytale hinterlands
because the music is louder here and rawer
because the night is seamless, the snow is colder
and barricades of ice are thicker and more ornate;
we dance because our first names are at war with our last;
because we feel like flecks of dust
caught in a light stream between two closed windows.

We dance because newness is glittering at our pores
and floating in the air around us like clouds of fireflies.

We dance because staccato sounds are stretching our limbs
into shapes we have never seen before.

We dance because our language is not our own
but magic is dripping from our polyglot tongues
and running down our chins
like the honeyed juice of overripe mangoes.