Open Water

by Caleb Azumah Nelson

You would soon learn that love made you worry, but it also made you beautiful.

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?

There’s no solace in the shade,

I guess there was something in the room that night, which I didn’t feel until I met her. Something which, looking back, I couldn’t ignore. When you sow a seed, it will grow. Somehow, someway, it will grow.

. I met this woman and she wasn’t a stranger. I knew we had met before. I knew we would meet again.

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.

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?

‘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.’

You’re wondering how you would explain the latter to the witness you requested. But nothing happened, you would say. The witness would shake their head, as if to say, 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.

When the mind is lost in ecstasy, there is no condition for self-reflection, self-questioning.

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’re clocking in and dreaming your days away. You’re not entirely unhappy here, but herein lies the issue; this job is far too comfortable, and for the most part, considering you and your colleagues are cogs in a giant machine, you’re all treated quite well.

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 so hard your chest hurts and you feel light-headed. You’re looking forward to the safety in pleasure. You’re looking forward to forgetting, albeit briefly, the existential dread which plagues you, which tightens your chest, which pains your left side. You’re looking forward to forgetting that, leaving the house, you might not return intact. You’re looking forward to freedom, even if it is short, even if it might not last. You’re looking forward.

You’re writing her letters, building her a world you can share.

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.

Hanif Abdurraqib wrote about this album, wondering how strange a life, to be presented to the world, through your flaws; through blood, swollen face, your bent body. 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, when you’re matching Phife word for word, or singing the refrain, We got the jazz, we got the jazz. How beautiful, when you’re in a crowd, and you find your wandering gaze met by another, twenty, thirty metres away, both of you unaware that your shoulders and hips are moving to the bassline, because this is not something you have had to think about for once, this is something you just do, and understanding this, and the circumstances which brought you to this moment, you both raise a small hand of acknowledgement.

It’s one thing to be looked at and another to be seen.

Faith is turning off the light and trusting the other person will not murder you in your sleep. This is basic, audacious. Name your love. Name the sweet whispers exchanged in the darkness. Name the beauty of imagining your partner’s fluttering eyelids as she dreams in her waking moments. How beautiful is beauty? You can find her lips with your eyes closed. Nothing more durable than a feeling. Tell her you’re scared of being taken from her. Tell her what you struggle to tell yourself on some days. Tell her you love her and know what comes with these words. Describe the image of God in the darkness: the crooks of her long, slender limbs, catching light, even in the dark; features slack, eyes closed, lips turned up in a slight smile, cheeks pulling up with them, a small, pleasurable sigh slipping from her mouth every so often; the way her body tightens, loosens, tightens, loosens with every touch, every graze across the fine curve of her spine. Let her kiss the single tear. You don’t know why you’re crying. Sometimes, love aches. You’re not sad but bowled over. Crumpled like a car crash. Tell her a story. Remind her about that time: The fever dream of an evening, your minds swollen with heat. You and she swing your hips this way and that, letting rum dribble from the lips of cups onto the basement floor. A friend croons melancholy from the stage but the joy is not lost. Guitars strum sweet like the cocktails in your hands. You are more than the sum of your traumas, you decide...

This definitive arrives when your best friend breaks the hot silence, cool and measured. She tells you she loves you and now you know that you don’t have to be the sum of your traumas, that multiple truths exist, that you love her too.

Unfurl, stretch out a spine made crooked by keeping small.

Love as a form of meditation; reaching towards a more honest expression of self. Remember that your body has memory. Scars do not always blemish.

To my queen, forever is a mighty long time, but I knew you before I met you, so now we’re free. You didn’t have a home coming into this world, but you’re home now. You’re home now.

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