Small Worlds

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.

‘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.

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.

Grief never ends, but we find a way to walk in the light someone has left behind, rather than living in pain’s shadow.

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.

the doubts my father had now feel justified. I feel tired inside, my spirit worn out by the effort it took to hope and dream, to believe, to imagine myself a future in which I could choose something for me.

In the times we didn’t know ourselves, we always had each other; when faced with the unknown, we could lean back into the familiar, knowing each other’s hearts, knowing each other’s intimacies.

the soft pounding of fists accompanied by, in a bit, which is less a goodbye, more a promise to stay alive.

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.