REMAINS AND DECREES

I crossed the archives as one walks through a field of ruins. Decrees were bones, dogmas were nails. Kings signed treaties in ink darker than darkness, a pact forged in daggers. Papal bulls oozed blood beneath God's varnish. Codes etched the systematic animalization into stone. They legislated hell, administered suffering, theorized the slaughterhouse. Even science became an executioner, draping contempt in formulas and measured skulls. I didn’t read history, I breathed it, its ashes glued to my lungs, its screams wedged in the margins. They crucified continents for their gems, their plantations, their ores, and their silences. They told me: progress. But I saw boots pressed to throats. They told me: forget. But the graves still speak. They told me: democracy. I saw tanks circling the ballot boxes. And you, West, with your carnivorous grin, you demand forgiveness without returning the bones. You scream values with your pockets full of plunder. You dress up your hunger as mission. You baptize your rape as liberation. You persist, you insist, you gorge yourself. But our memories are neither dead nor tame. They sharpen.