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The two of you, like headphone wires tangling, caught up in this something. A happy accident. A messy miracle.
You would soon learn that love made you worry, but it also made you beautiful.
You told her not to look at you because when your gazes meet you cannot help but be honest.
Ask: if flexing is being able to say the most in the fewest number of words, is there a greater flex than love? Nowhere to hide, nowhere to go. A direct gaze. The gaze requires no words at all; it is an honest meeting.
There should be no shame in openly saying, I want this. There should be no shame in not knowing what one wants.
is a strange thing, to desire your best friend; two pairs of hands wandering past boundaries, asking forgiveness rather than permission: ‘Is this OK?’ coming a fraction after the motion.
It is the wrong season to have a crush.
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.
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?
I guess there was something in the room that night, which I didn’t feel until I met her.
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 dance through topics like two old friends, finding comfort in a language which is instantly familiar. You create a small world for yourselves, and for you both only, sitting on this sofa,
‘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 feel you have never been strangers. You do not want to leave each other, because to leave is to have the thing die in its current form
Under what conditions does unconditional love become no more? The answer is you will never not cry for your father. You don’t always like those you love unconditionally. Language fails us, always. Flimsy things, these words.
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.
Like Baldwin said, you begin to think you are alone in this, until you read.
You just wanted to feel something like joy, even if it was small. You just wanted to be free.
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.
Have you ever been afraid of what lies within you, what you’re capable of ?
Which is to say everything comes of something else. Which is to say from your solid ache comes a gentle joy.
Turn to your neighbour and take one step forward as they take another step back, switch positions, move, move, move, become overwhelmed by the water, let it wash over you, let the trauma rise up like vomit, spill it, go on, let it spill on the ground, let go of that pain, let go of that fear, let go. You are safe here, you said. You are seen here. You can live here. We are all hurting, you said. We are all trying to live, to breathe, and find ourselves stopped by that which is out of our control. We find ourselves unseen. We find ourselves unheard. We find ourselves mislabelled. We who are
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You hear her low exhale and know she understands you’re not tired in the way sleep will solve, no. You’re weary. You’re not without joy, but the pain is much, often. And like Jimmy said, you begin to think you are alone in this, until she says: ‘Me too.’
I dance to breathe but often I dance until I’m breathless and sweaty and I can feel all of me, all those parts of me I can’t always feel, I don’t feel like I’m allowed to. It’s my space. I make a little world for myself, and I live.’
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?
‘I feel like a big part of our foundation is eating and drinking together.’
Your legs are tangled in order, hers, yours, hers, yours, and your arms curl around each other’s backs. You fit, as if this has been your everyday. You don’t talk here, in her bedroom, where it’s dark and hot and heavy, making quick light steps towards sleep. 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.
Don’t you know what that means? Lying together, sober, with only the vague shape of her as a guide for existing, feeling safe. Is that what love is? The feeling of safety? And here you are, safe in her presence, separated only by each other’s silence.
The trouble is, this is trouble that you welcome. 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.
‘I helped raise my brother. I know what it’s like to love like that. To have joy and to be pained, and sometimes to have real anger towards him. He’s my best friend but sometimes he’s like my son too.’
When the mind is lost in ecstasy, there is no condition for self-reflection, self-questioning. You’re not asking yourself questions. You’re not asking yourself about the conditions under which you and she met.
You’re not thinking of what it looks like. You’re not thinking. You’re feeling. You are in a memory of something yet to happen.
You’re like my best friend,’ she slurs. ‘You’re so much more.’
Under what conditions does the uncontainable stay contained? 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 have acted on a feeling. You are in a memory of the present. You are tumbling through a fever dream, surfacing only to plunge once more.
nothing really happened but two friends sharing a bed and knowing an intimacy some never will.
He looked scared because instead of questioning himself, of interrogating his beliefs, of not filling in the gaps, he continues to look at you as a danger. You fit the profile. You fit the description. You don’t fit in the box but he has squeezed you in.
tell her that you’re tired, in your spirit, that you have made peace with dying but it hurts all the same.
To be you is to apologize and often that apology comes in the form of suppression. That suppression is indiscriminate. That suppression knows not when it will spill. 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.
You’re not a prophet but you should trust yourself more often.
To give desire a voice is to give it a body through which to breathe and live. It is to admit and submit to something which is on the outer limits of your understanding.
You think about what it means to desire your best friend in this way. You think about holding onto this feeling for so long, holding it down, holding it in, because sometimes it’s easier to hide in your own darkness than to emerge, naked and vulnerable, blinking in your own light.
You’re daydreaming, thinking of spending your days elsewhere. You want to take a plane somewhere, and walk.
It’s summer now, and you’re craving a simpler existence. You want to read. You want to write. You want to meet strangers for dinner, and not refuse another drink at another bar. You want to dance. You want to find yourself in a basement, neck loose, bobbing your head as a group of musicians play, not because they should, but because they must. It’s summer now, and you’re looking forward to worrying less. You’re looking forward to longer nights and shorter days. You’re looking forward to gathering in back gardens and watching meat sputter on an open barbecue. You’re looking forward to laughing
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It’s summer now, and she’s drawn a line towards you, or maybe the line always existed, will always exist. It’s summer now, and language is still flimsy, inadequate, so you stand, silenced by the weight of it all, letting your bodies confess their truths.
It’s summer now and language is flimsy but sometimes it is all you have.
How strange a life you and other Black people lead, forever seen and unseen, forever heard and silenced. And how strange a life it is to have to carve out small freedoms, to have to tell yourself that you can breathe. But how beautiful it is when those freedoms arrive, when you are breathing,
How wonderful are moments like these, where you don’t have to hide? How wonderful to realize, amidst thrum of a bass drum, that sometimes it is a joy to be alive?
You’re back at her house now, talking into the night. You’re talking about art and expression and suppression, and this is when you bring up the film Moonlight. You saw it first at a free screening in east London, and were struck by how a mood could be expressed through colour, the vivid palette Liberty City offers providing the backdrop for a story you began to increasingly feel in your chest. Blues and pinks and purples. When you left the cinema, you could not speak. When you rode the train home, you could not speak.
You were in your room, after the screening, sobbing silent, soft gasps, not because it pained you but because there was hope yet.
