The Deep

by Rivers Solomon

“We grow anxious and restless without you, my child. One can only go for so long without asking who am I? Where do I come from? What does all this mean? What is being? What came before me, and what might come after? Without answers, there is only a hole, a hole where a history should be that takes the shape of an endless longing. We are cavities. You don’t know what it’s like, blessed with the rememberings as you are,” said Amaba.

She had no wish to transform trauma to performance, to parade what she’d come to think of as her own tragedies for entertainment.

“What is belonging?” we ask. She says, “Where loneliness ends.”