Where Do We Go From Here?

Available accessResearch articleFirst published online September, 2017

Where Do We Go From Here?

Volume 23, Issue 7https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800417718305

Abstract

Keywords

social death memory corporeality violence mass shootings

Where do we go from here?

Here where blood drips like sweat,

runs freer than water,

coats the floor and makes you fall down?

Why do we always forget

that blood is slippery

then sticky

then impossible to wash away,

that it gets under fingernails

and into nostrils

behind ears

and between toes

settling into the creases of pliant, ashy palms

getting trapped in the fibers of fabrics

and minds?

Do we not remember that

it dyes walls

stains concrete

soaks into dirt

finds its way into places raindrops never reach?

Blood, takes up residence in crevices

the unexamined underneath.

It seeks out fissures

and dries there

holding space until it is old and forgotten

then it flakes and scatters

like dandruff or confetti or rainbow glitter

clinging to our eyelashes

one shard at a time.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Traci-Ann Wint is a PhD candidate in the African and African Diaspora Studies department at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on cultural and heritge tourism, national identity formation, gender and sexuality, and the commodification of Blackness, particularly in the Caribbean. She holds an MA in Social Anthropology from UT Austin and a BA in Anthropology and Africana Studies from Vassar College.