At Kew, I noticed the absence

of Black and brown visitors, while our living objects were displayed all wrong  

Their Whakapapa erased by white faces, unequipped with the frameworks to decode their complexity

I visited once as a child,
but re-visitng with fresh eyes led me to realise Kew isn’t even a garden,

Rather, another museum of the British empire, where perceived authority is asserted upon living objects:

“I know your things better than you do and thats why they’re on display in our country, not yours

That’s why they’re labelled specimens in our instiituions”