the only reason guns could ever be fired into a crowd is to witness
the silence a bullet promises. after each shot, time is always the first
to lose its shape. cyborgs tend to think faster than humans at the time
of death. an old woman asks what the protest is for. he points to her
son’s stiffened body by the roadside. she weeps. the tears seep into
my bedroom floor. so many stories have surfaced since the incident.
in one, there was never a cyborg in sight. in another, nobody
cared to ask whose face was being pressed against the asphalt.
there would come a time when i would stop believing in everything
my body tells me. a time when i would stand in the path of a bullet
and wait for a cyborg to tell me if i’m still alive or not. a time when
i would look through the lens of a broken periscope and snatch
the rifles of policemen aiming at peaceful protesters. it appears
it is harder to mistake a flyswatter for a racket than it is to mistake
a hairbrush for a gun or crumbs of chocolate for weed. before a wall
built by bodies, the cyborg stands. fists the sky. the crowd chants
for freedom; for a day faithful enough to let love blossom; for a land
sprouting with springs of milk. in the video, the cyborg is seen seething
through scrums of bullets. there’s a version that ends where
the cyborg feeds death to its own end. the final round of the fight
against injustice. humans flood their homes with tears
in preparation for the joy that is coming.