Works in Process

10 August 2012. My boxes in a closet at my parents' house in Pennsylvania. I dream of them. In the dreams they are lost in the damp basement and I search for them while ghosts tug at my sleeves and I try to avoid the clump of darkness that sits in the corner. It is August in the leaf dark of Pennsylvania and the backyard is vined and snaked and patterned with green trees. The crickets in the locust trees saw their legs. The air is heavy with the rain that fell all last night and this morning. I bring the rain everywhere: in Northern Uganda, George named me Akot. My boxes are full of photographic paper, printed paper, bound and scuffed paper, painted-on, scribbled-on, drawn-on paper. These boxes are my identity--for now.