The pictures align in front of me, showing me the things she has seen, the places she has been, the words that leak out from her heart. They speak of things I know but do not understand, plumbing the depths of her experiences, echoing the chambers of her soul, so that I wish I could.
But I can’t.
I look with eyes that do not see, listen with ears that do not hear. There is incomprehension because I cannot make myself care enough for another to feel their heartbeat, to sway to their music, to acknowledge that we are so different and yet we are alike.
Because I won’t.
My fists are curled up tight because I do not wish to let go of myself, to let go of all the things that make me whole, which are all the things that also break me apart, scattering me into fragmented pieces that cannot grasp what it is to be someone else. To love someone else. To be.
So I don’t.
Who they speak to, I cannot tell. Maybe they will whisper their secrets to you in their images and in their lines. Maybe you will grasp all the things she is trying to say but is too ephemeral for me. I need the earth beneath me, holding me firm; she flies in the sky, free, soaring above the wind.
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Kafayat Quadri is holding a poetography exhibition in the Lightbox @ LUMA, The Whiteaways Arcade, this weekend. Come drop by from 10am - 6pm!
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