It was not the sight of the dead dog that brought it back. I have seen worse things in my life than nature taking its course. It was his smell. That rotten, dead smell. Or perhaps the fact that he was not dead at all but dying. Slowly dying in a stinking puddle of himself. How long had he been here? Did it feel longer?
It’s long when you’re dying. Nights are the worst and it was always night. We had no windows. Those long long hours at sea.
All the while I was standing there the dog was dying, each breath coming harder than the last. Dry mouthed. Some days we got no water at all. Are parts of him already dead? Is it just the mechanisms in his body keeping him going now? Slowly winding down till he reaches land somewhere. Parts of me too are already dead.
Was disease killing him? Like it killed some of us? Creeping slowly from one iron muzzle to another, lingering in open flog wounds and ingested from shit dirty fingers. I was one of the lucky ones. They took the sick ones, chained them up, and threw them into the sea. Damage limitation. You see dead slaves were still worth something as long as you didn’t tell that you murdered them at sea.
They buried us all at sea really, one giant coffin for us all. Dead soul chained to dead soul chained to dead soul. I learnt later that it took a court of white men two trials to come to the decision that we were people.
Poor dog. The lucky ones always died at sea.
Short writing project about Slavery and ideas of memories and remembering. Quite a difficult subject to write about but I am quite proud of this piece.
No comments:
Post a Comment