Summary

Caleb Femi’s ‘Thirteen’ presents a haunting imagined episode in the life of a Black boy, just four minutes from home, who is stopped and cornered by police officers. The accusation is vague – he supposedly fits the description of a suspect involved in a robbery forty minutes earlier. The boy laughs and protests that he is only thirteen.

This triggers a memory of a school assembly at Gloucester Primary where the same policeman once told the boy’s class they were “supernovas” – bright stars full of promise. The boy hopes this shared past will offer him protection. He smiles, hoping the man remembers the warmth of that moment and the “heat” of belief in a young child’s potential. But instead, the officers regard him as “powerless – plump,” reducing him to a body to be searched or violated. He sees them casting “lots for [his] organs,” evoking visceral imagery of dehumanisation.

The poem ends with a chilling realisation. Supernovas, his teacher once explained, are dying stars, collapsing into black holes. The hopeful metaphor is inverted. What was once a symbol of brilliance becomes a prophecy of erasure. Femi offers a lyrical indictment of a world where childhood light is snuffed out by systemic fear and violence.