Open Water

by Caleb Azumah Nelson

The gaze requires no words at all; it is an honest meeting.

no shame in not knowing what one wants.

How does one shake off desire? To give it a voice is to sow a seed, knowing that somehow, someway, it will grow. It is to admit and submit to something which is on the outer limits of your understanding.

‘You can’t live in a vacuum. And when you let people in and you make yourself vulnerable, they’re able to have an effect on you. If that makes sense.’

You don’t always like those you love unconditionally. Language fails us, always. Flimsy things, these words. And everything flounders in the face of real gratitude, which even a thank you cannot surmise, but a thank you to her also.

Language fails us, and sometimes our parents do too. We all fail each other, sometimes small, sometimes big, but look, when we love we trust, and when we fail, we fracture that joint.

Trauma makes you considerate.

You have been going and going and going and now you have decided to slow down, to a halt, and confess.

Have you ever been afraid of what lies within you, what you’re capable of ?

‘The ancestors visit us and we let them take over.’ Maybe the ancestors are always within and you let them emerge.

Do not resist the call of a drum.

Perhaps that is how we should frame this question forever; rather than asking what is your favourite work, let’s ask, what continues to pull you back?

You would like someone to stop you and ask, What are you doing?, to which you would reply, I’m doing what I feel.

Things unsaid don’t often remain so. They take shape and form in ways one doesn’t expect, manifesting in touches, glances, gazes, sighs.

You are hollowed out, like it was not just your bag they emptied.

You remember the silence was heavy with all that was not said, all that goes unsaid.

Let’s ask anyone else who has ever fit a description: you ever had to play dead? Have you ever not been seen? Are you tired?

What you’re trying to say is that it’s easier for you to hide in your own darkness, than emerge cloaked in your own vulnerability. Not better, but easier. However, the longer you hold it in, the more likely you are to suffocate. At some point, you must breathe.

‘Just go with your instincts.’

You’re not a prophet but you should trust yourself more often.

It would have let the resistance fall away and given you the freedom to act.

It was easier for you to remain silent and hold the desire to yourself.

You think about spillage, and whether this is something that can be mopped up.

You’re daydreaming, thinking of spending your days elsewhere. You want to take a plane somewhere, and walk.

DJ Screw, legendary Houston pioneer of chopped and screwed music, would make songs at slower tempos, to feel the music and so you can hear what the rapper is saying.

You’re trying to write slow, so she can hear what you’re saying, but also because there is pleasure in this, where it is not so much a matter of the head but of the chest.

The face does not lie.

You wonder what it means to know someone, and whether it’s possible to do so wholly.

Every time you remember something, the memory weakens, as you’re remembering the last recollection, rather than the memory itself. Nothing can remain intact. Still, it does not stop you wanting, does not stop you longing.

You are here and you are not.

You while away the evening together, doing nothing really, which is something, is an intimacy in itself. To not fill your time with someone is to trust, and to trust is to love.

You know that to love is both to swim and to drown. You know to love is to be a whole, partial, a joint, a fracture, a heart, a bone. It is to bleed and heal. It is to be in the world, honest. It is to place someone next to your beating heart, in the absolute darkness of your inner, and trust they will hold you close. To love is to trust, to trust is to have faith. How else are you meant to love?

‘You’re far away,’ she says, returning you to the present. ‘Don’t hide from me.’

When she asks, are you OK, do not fear the truth. Besides, she knows before you speak. There’s no solace in the shade.

You are more than the sum of your traumas, you decide,

‘My body is back but my mind is still there.’

‘The sunshine. The climate, it makes me want to do things. To be out in the world. When I’m here, winter comes, and I hibernate.’ You both laugh. ‘I wasn’t meant to be here, you know? I’ve been in this country years and years, before you were born. Came here, had my children, my children are having children. And still, it doesn’t feel like home. Doesn’t feel like I’m wanted here.

Go somewhere you can be free. Where you don’t have to think too tough about what you do before you do it. Find a place you can call home.’

You live at a pace in which you are unmoving. You live as a version less than yourself. You sob often, suffocating wherever you go. You are hiding yourself. You are running, stuck in place. You are scared and heavy.

Multiple truths do exist, and you do not have to be the sum of your traumas.

Death is not always physical, and crying is not always an expression of pain.

The grief makes them tired. The effort makes them tired.