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.

It never ceased to trouble her that peace depended on the violent seizing and squeezing out of other creatures.

That was all remembering was. Prodding them lest they try to move on from things that should not be moved on from. Forgetting was not the same as healing.

“A homeland is just a place,” said Oori, her voice quiet and unsteady. She’d never sounded so defeated. “It’s a place that means something because of its history. I know you have a complicated relationship with the past. I do too. But if I don’t protect what is left of it there, I will have no homeland. It will just be another place,” Oori explained.

Pain is energy. It lights us. This is the most basic premise of our life. Hunger makes us eat. Tiredness causes us to sleep. Pain makes us avenge.

These didn’t have to be contradictions. She let the multiple truths exist inside her as a way of meditating.