Bronze Boys Don't Bleed

I’m sitting at the feet of a dead soldier
who never asked to be a monument
and a man at the Roma Memorial this morning
said he didn’t understand
why GYPSIES had a memorial
said in the way you say why is there a step here
when you’ve never been made to sleep in the rain
My blood is older than his question
My blood has been answering his question
with its absence
for five hundred years
and my phone buzzes
Someone’s fingers sending me sweet things
I’ve been thinking about you —
and I’ve been thinking about them too
about the architecture of their hands
the particular weight of want that has no politics
Just skin animal fact
Just the weight of it

Just —
but I’m sitting here
at the feet of a man made of stone
Who died for something
or was told he did
and Europe is voting again
and the votes are looking familiar
and I wonder what he knew about that
the boy they cast in bronze
the boy who bled in the snow for something
called the future
before the future learned to goosestep again
in Italian suits and ballot papers
and respectable fonts
and the text says something that makes me
want to be horizontal
something that has no interest in history
something that knows exactly
what it is doing
and I want to be only that
I want to be only the want
I want the particular mercy
of a body that pulls you
out of the century

but the man this morning looked right through me
the way Europe always has
like I am a smudge on the map
an asterisk in the footnotes of the murdered
also: Romani. also: Sinti. also: already gone
and I am sitting here with his contempt
still warm in my chest
like a stone I did not throw
and the soldier does not bleed
because they made him bronze
so he would last
so we could sit at his feet
and ask was it worth it
and he cannot answer
and Europe is answering for him
and I already know
what Europe says
and someone’s fingers are typing something
I will think about later
in the dark
with considerably less clothes on
and considerably less century

and I am both of these things at once
the grief and the want
the blood that is five hundred years of absence
and the body that is
right now
very much present
and tired
and furious
and inconveniently alive
and the votes are looking familiar
and bronze boys don’t bleed
but I do