Slatemine, Shut Down Poem by Liesbeth V. Hafenrichter

Here it was, where my father used to lite a fire
Serious, talking to himself.
We would play school,
Squatted, like girls wearing patent leathers do
amidst the red broom bushes
with knees that have nothing in common with them

We were writing on pieces of blue slate
that it was us who wrote that down
We were writing that the potatoes already
were in the fire to cook
and would come out blackened
we were scratching on the black slates that we could not
write down everything a thousand times
on all those thousand pieces of slate
and that we would come back, later