What We Lose

by Zinzi Clemmons

I want to write rage but all that comes is sadness.

Audre Lorde

You may be able to pass in mainstream society, appearing acceptable to others, even desired. But in reality you have nowhere to rest, nowhere to feel safe. Even while you’re out in public, feeling fine and free, inside you cannot shake the feeling of rootlessness.

His last name is one syllable—strong, uncomplicated. It reminds me of steel or stone.

I had many things I wanted to say. Some sleepless nights ago, I’d made a list of all the things I needed to apologize for, all the things I needed to tell her I forgave her for. But as I stood there with those mathematics in hand, the weight of the moment on me, I said nothing. And when I tried to speak, only tears came. The pain was exponential. Because as much as I cried, she could not comfort me, and this fact only multiplied my pain. I realized that this would be life; to figure out how to live without her hand on my back; her soft, accented English telling me Everything will be all right, Thandi. This was the paradox: How would I ever heal from losing the person who healed me?

I made the choice to believe in my mother’s spirit. I chose to create a ghost, for the purpose of my own comfort. It made me happy to think that my mother still existed somewhere and that she could help us right after her passing.

You cannot say anything that will describe the experience of a durian fruit. The durian fruit goes beyond all ideas and notions.

I thought about how every place on Earth contained its tragedies, love stories, people surviving and others falling, and for this reason, from far enough of a distance and under enough darkness, they were all essentially the same.

Our heroes tend to be orphans. Beowulf, Batman, even Harry Potter. There are plenty of plausible explanations. Perhaps they all began as spectacular individuals, and not having parents afforded them more room to define their identity in a spectacular way? Or does the loss of parents endow them with a drive to do greater things? Do they just have more to prove? Or do we simply view the loss of parents as the most tragic of situations, so that a person who overcomes such a circumstance is necessarily imbued with some aspect of heroism?

I have yearned for certain sensations—the feeling of being able to contain someone’s hopes and fears in one touch.

Yes, there is that dark, terrifying loneliness that scares me, but I am acquainted with fear. If I stay inside it long enough, root my heels in deeper, it doesn’t feel scary anymore. It feels like home.

I’ve amazed myself with how well I’ve learned to live around her absence. This void is my constant companion, no matter what I do. Nothing will fill it, and it will never go away.