Open Water

by Caleb Azumah Nelson

‘You two are in something. I don’t know what it is, but you guys are in something. Some people call it a relationship, some call it friendship, some call it love, but you two, you two are in something.’

Love made you Black, as in, you were most coloured when in her presence.

Besides, sometimes, to resolve desire, it’s better to let the thing bloom. To feel this thing, to let it catch you unaware, to hold onto the ache. What is better than believing you are heading towards love?

The hitch comes undone with a silent twang, and she slides one bud in her ear, the other in yours. Two people closing a distance made shorter by the trailing wires holding them together. ‘What’s your favourite song?’ she asks, having to lean in to make herself heard over the Underground.

This is fucking cute

You were careful not to breach a border, except you all know something has opened; the seed you pushed deep into the ground has blossomed in the wrong season.

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.

You wanted to smile, raising your hands in jubilance. You just wanted to feel something like joy, even if it was small. You just wanted to be free.

She nods, appreciatively. ‘I hear that. Dancing. That was my thing. Still is.’ You feel her body ease into the sofa as she speaks. ‘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.’

‘Erm, sure,’ you say. You turn, bending your knees slightly. Her fingers find tender purchase in the grooves between your collarbone and shoulder blades, and she takes refuge on your back, laying her cheek across the side of your neck. Her thighs in your hands, you make the short journey with ease.

Kicking my fucking feet

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 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.’

You fit the profile. You fit the description. You don’t fit in the box but he has squeezed you in.

Powerful

She asked you to take her portrait. You placed her against the brickwork fencing her balcony and waited for both of you to relax. Your hands shook as she handed you her vulnerability, and you struggled to focus the lens on her features. When the contact sheet returns, the grid of pictures resembles a tussle; two people wrestling with how they feel about one another. The face does not lie. How the eyes widen, the skin around the mouth tightening, or, your favourite from the set, the last shot on the roll of film, where you trained the lens in her direction in a moment where her eyes were on you, not the lens, but you, and all guises slipped away with the ease of a gossamer sheet in the wind.

The place you perch ends up being the cool concrete of someone’s stairs. You point to a building opposite and tell her how, many years ago, a diminutive, softly-spoken man spoke his joy in a basement full of strangers, playing long-forgotten cuts and songs you grew up with. You tell her this but soon you have trailed off, tearing into the chicken, dashing the bones away into the gutter. Something heavy here, in the absence of your words.

I dont know why its giving a star is born

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.

It’s familiar, even when you reach under her shirt, and take a nipple, tender, between forefinger and thumb, the rest of your hand splayed against her warm skin.

oh wow

Your breathing weighs more here.

You said to trust is not to fill time, but you would like to say to trust is to fill that time with each other.

So maybe motion is the wrong word, rhythm is better.

They aren’t questioning you or her but glance in your direction. With this act, they confirm what you already know: that your bodies are not your own. You’re scared they will take them back, so you pull down the hood which is shielding you from the cold.