This phenomenon spreading like a virus, like contagion, that asks us to stop considering our people and community, and only think of value; value that can be rendered in words and numbers, can be exchanged with a signature. It asks us not to think of people but property. But what of the people?

Because she emerged from that place of waiting, where surviving the conditions she was being asked to endure was nothing short of a miracle. When I ask more of Mum, of the time she came here, the problem isn’t that she doesn’t remember. It’s that she cannot forget.

‘History is haunting them boys, so they’re out on the street, haunting the city. We’re all haunted in some way. All my dance moves are my father’s.

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.

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.

I gaze at my parents, and see that a world can be two people, occupying a space where they don’t have to explain. Where they can feel beautiful. Where they might feel free.

I know when she hears a sequence or phrase which pleases, her features will soften, taken by something like wonder. We’ve known each other so long I don’t know what name to give to this knowing.

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.

The quote only reinforces this, meant to imply that God is everywhere, in all of us, in some way, in rhythm, in love. Everything is everything, she says, with a smile.