Open Water

by Caleb Azumah Nelson

met. The two of you, like headphone wires tangling, caught up in this something. A happy accident. A messy miracle.

if you find yourself falling asleep alone with but the memory of intimacy, it will be a shaft of summer creeping through the gap in your curtains.

Mmm. I agree. I just . . . I met this woman and she wasn’t a stranger. I knew we had met before. I knew we would meet again. How did you know? I just knew.

You don’t always like those you love unconditionally.

Like Baldwin said, you begin to think you are alone in this, until you read.

‘When someone sees you – I’m just talking about day to day, you know – you’re either this or that. But when I’m doing my thing?’ A pause, as memory holds her, warm, thick, comforting. ‘When I’m doing my thing, I get to choose.’

You lost your God so you cannot even pray, and anyway, prayer is just confessing one’s desire and it’s not that you don’t know what you want, it’s that you don’t know what to do about it.

‘There are really only two plot devices when writing: a stranger comes to town, or a person goes on a journey. All good work is just variations of these ideas.’

‘I feel like a big part of our foundation is eating and drinking together.’

You don’t talk here, but even if you did, the words would fail you, language insufficient to reflect the intense mess of being this intimate with another.

Is that what love is? The feeling of safety?

The poet sees you, the poet sees her,

You realize there is a reason clichés exist, and you would happily have your breath taken away, three seconds at a time, maybe more, by this woman.

in the end, one finds they will never not cry for their brothers.

You’re not thinking. You’re feeling.

‘You look like you got hit by a bus, and you dusted yourself off, and did it again for the hell of it. You look like you’re wondering when the next time you can get hit by that bus is.’

The line was there, is always there, will always be there, but you’re both trying to strengthen it.

It’s summer now and language is flimsy but sometimes it is all you have.

It’s summer now.

You look around the basement and remember that being seen is no small joy.

You want to tell her, one day at a time, as you have been. You want to tell her you cannot wait to learn more about her, about all of her. But that you can and will wait, that time means nothing to you and her now, not really.

That night you both get drunk and steal glasses from the bar. You tell her she deserves to be loved in the way you love her, and she starts to cry, quiet as rain.

All actions are prayer, and these people have faith. Sometimes, this is all you can have. Sometimes, faith is enough.

You and she were forever improvising, but two has become one, and without her there’s nowhere for you to twist and turn. The music has stopped.

You have always thought if you opened your mouth in open water you would drown, but if you didn’t open your mouth you would suffocate. So here you are, drowning.