Small Worlds

Sometimes, silence in the face of trauma is useful. It allows time for those grieving to mourn, to organize, for a feeling to lose its haze and ossify, and to try to give words to what has been done unto us. And if not words, then sound, music, rhythm, an ah, a gasp, a hum, a groan, spillage, deluge. But a continued silence, this might consume us.

He was trying to say, this is our pain, this is the making of us. He was trying to say, we are standing in the aftermath of disaster. He was trying to fight the inability to speak with his desire to.

I let myself be split open like fruit, ripe and ready, everything which had been hovering below my surface rising, flowing, spilling, deluge, the sadness, the grief, the mourning. I want to say, I have lost, I have hurt, I have ached.

We won’t smooth over our closures and ruptures, but ask each other to be open, to lean towards each other, to be close. Ask that love might grow in the space between us, where we might feel beautiful, where we might feel free.

Auntie Yaa’s shop had gone; she, Del, and I were not talking; I was so far from home and the community it held; my small world was crumbling, being made dust, and rather than reaching out, gathering what I could, trying to build myself anew, I let my grip loosen, let the world go on without me.

She shakes her head, and is quiet for a moment, like she’s struggling for the words, like her anger is returning, which is just love in another body.

I’ve been trying to hear my own song again, picking up my trumpet almost every day, sending sounds into the world. She kisses me and the world quietens. This closeness, this brief intimacy, feels final, feels like goodbye.

Bill Withers is playing, ‘Can We Pretend?’

He leaves me to carry the shame of a man who doesn’t know how to say how he feels, or rather, doesn’t know how to bridge the gap between feeling and expression, and fears trying, fears what he might find out about himself. He leaves me standing there, holding the shame of a son whose father won’t speak to him.