“before the invention of boundaries (which was the invention of fences, and also the invention of countries – countries being the invention of men wearing clothes the colour of trees, patrolling the arbitrary lines, the dark promise of their rifles);
before the invention of stamps (which was the invention of bureaucracy, which was the invention of embassies, which was the invention of old women gathered hopelessly on Hope Road, the quartz of their sweat glistening on their foreheads)”
~from “Here That Was Here Before” by Kei Miller