A Distant Nearness

From his hands white, hang blood diamonds and fur, keys to boardrooms and shoes shined for climbing ladders, a cushion upon which to sit at the table. The eyes of a black man, glittering, see a seed in his hand without soil in which to sow. An Indigenous woman’s face fades from a missing person’s poster, one of the Canadian two thousand. A millennial dresses for a party as an American Indian, red stripes on their face, drunk in a plastic tepee. When you grazed your knee as a child, what colour plaster covered your skin? As one family tosses out cartons unopened, bought but not eaten, another father stands counting coupons cut, in a queue snaking. I introduced my boyfriend and came out; you just brought your girlfriend round for tea. Somewhere in Central London a polar bear was spotted sweating and thin, trawling bins for scraps.