The Attic Child

by Lola Jaye

“What if they are not in need of help? What if people go there to help themselves?”

“Just keep yourself to yourself, I say. What if liberal explorers like yourself start to breed with them, what happens then? An impure race, that’s what. Then what do we do?”

Sometimes I would be reminded of the past: moments that should never have been. The shadow of grief was also never far behind me.

The longing would start with a dull ache in almost every part of my body, turning into a need

to release what would only come when I opened my mouth and allowed a powerful sound to emerge: either a howl like a beast or a small cry like that of a newly hatched bird.

because as a man, I wasn’t supposed to cry.

Yet I told myself it was permitted, because for those few moments I was not a man, but simply an eleven-year-old boy again.

Scatter me in my homeland so that I can once again be among the air, the water and the landscapes I left behind.

At the end of it all, what really matters is that you allow yourself to love and be loved.