Small Worlds

by Caleb Azumah Nelson

I gaze at my parents, and see that a world can be two people, occupying a space where they don’t have to explain.

she knows the way light holds my neck, she knows my rhythm, even when I’m still.

Del’s lips make a brief home on my cheek, and we pull each other close. We give no goodbyes – we know death in its multitudes, and goodbye sounds like an end – instead, after our embrace, the soft pounding of fists accompanied by, in a bit, which is less a goodbye, more a promise to stay alive.

food is not just sustenance but memory, nostalgia; a way to quell longing, a way to build new foundations.

Before sealing the box, she places a photo of herself atop the food, so it is her smile which greets her sister on arrival.

Something has changed, shifted between us; or maybe, it had always been this way, just we’ve chosen now to see it.

I want a place for us. On the menu, food from home: waakye and red-red, fresh fish and meat stews. There would be a space for dining, and a space for more casual gathering, where people could grab and pick at food, eat happily with their hands if they wish. I would have long tables where families could gather, platters spread at intervals, or where friends could come together at the weekends, for no other reason than to talk, to talk about it all, to laugh and cry and everything between. I want a bar where people might drink and drink together, or enjoy their solitude. Art hanging on the walls, music always playing. Live music evenings and weekends, small reminders that it is a place where people could express themselves. I want to build a place where there’s a sense of freedom which isn’t attached to anything else, that doesn’t come as part of a transaction. There would be no catch. Just a place for people to eat and drink, to plot and breathe. To be. A place we could call home.

Today, I’m asking her what it means to wait. I’m asking her about the gaps where language fails us. I want to know because those stories are the making of me.

To go back home is not to go on holiday. If you are to go on holiday to Ghana, then you must quietly pack your bags, catch your flight, and on landing at Kotoka international airport, tell no one you are there. You must stay in a hotel, or with a trusted member of the family who doesn’t receive many visitors. You must ask the driver you hire – it’s a driver, taxi or tro-tro, a van converted into a bus service, if you’re trying to get around – not to take certain roads, for fear of being spotted, or that your longing will breach its borders. You must go as if you are a visitor, rather than returning to the place you were born. Otherwise, to go back home is to try to close an ever-widening chasm.

I’ve leaned on the same group of friends for so long that here, so far from home, I struggle with the openness it takes to grow close to anyone new.

I’m unable to find a way to say that since arriving, I don’t feel like myself, or rather, I don’t like this version of me, who’s insecure and rarely at ease, who doesn’t know how to dismantle his loneliness.

I feel tired inside, my spirit worn out by the effort it took to hope and dream, to believe, to imagine myself a future in which I could choose something for me.

I’ve tried to build my own small world in the vastness, and it’s helping: I’m feeling more and more like the person I was, or the person I might become.

There was no conversation about the shape of the thing between us, whether it would continue, whether it could continue. I said nothing because I didn’t know what would happen if I were to give us words, or rather, I knew what might happen, and didn’t want to entertain the possibility that we, Del and I, could end our song in its current form. I also wonder if too much has shifted; if the life she’s leading now appeals more than the one we shared.

the miracle which is a home-cooked meal encourages memory, image and possibility to fold in on one another. I am in the eye of a moshpit. I am in my mother’s kitchen. I am the ebb and flow of the ocean. I am the beach disappeared by the tide. I am the breath between notes. I am the silence. I don’t know myself any more. I am floating, floating. I am closed off, a total eclipse.

couples and lovers and strangers pull each other closer, making their bodies familiar,

his mouth full of gold like its own sunshine.

Grief never ends, but we find a way to walk in the light someone has left behind, rather than living in pain’s shadow.

I want him to tell me of movement, migration, burden, of having to choose which parts of your life to keep, which to let fall away. I want to ask him what he dreamed of, where he went to find freedom, do you know this feeling, this sadness on my shoulders?

I like that we already have our own language, our own rhythms: the sharp quips and softness of our exchanges, both spoken and wordless; the warmth of her body against mine when night falls, how her tiny afro will nuzzle against my cheek, or the gold chains swinging from her neck will tap against my chest. I like being able to be open, vulnerable. I like that nothing feels too serious right now; that I don’t have to dwell too much on the heaviness of the recent past, but can make a new future for myself, with her. I like who I am with her: secure and at ease.

To the world I’m calm like a river, but inside there’s a tide shifting and sweeping, thundering against my edges. I feel like I’m on the brink, somewhere on that narrow line between anger and sadness.

He leaves me to carry the shame of a man who doesn’t know how to say how he feels, or rather, doesn’t know how to bridge the gap between feeling and expression, and fears trying, fears what he might find out about himself. He leaves me standing there, holding the shame of a son whose father won’t speak to him.

I tell him, there’s freedom between these walls, that he’s made a place for people to eat and drink, to plot and breathe. To be. I tell him, this is what I’ve always wanted: a place for us, a place we could call home.

Mum always says my Ga has come in a suitcase, like I’m a visitor in my own language.

For Mum, every trip back home is an endeavour, in which she finds herself wrangling with who she is against who those back home think she should be. Every trip serves to close the ever-widening gap, the place she used to call home unaccepting of her in her current form.

They hit him and kicked him with might, with hate he didn’t know could be held in the body, let alone expressed on his body.

the laughter was the spine of our days.

The joy of my grandma, being able to feel my face in her hands, rather than pressing the shadow of my voice over a dusty phone line to her ear.

I let myself be split open like fruit, ripe and ready, everything which had been hovering below my surface rising, flowing, spilling, deluge, the sadness, the grief, the mourning.

This has all come together quickly, you think, in the way rain might fall without warning.

Even though our time together was short, it’s hard to imagine we were once strangers.

You try to stuff your life into a case which couldn’t possibly hold it.

That’s when Reggie trips, and they swarm. Consume him, whole. You watch his light become dull. You watch a whole life break in the time it takes to make an easy fall. The ground is always so close. You turn to go towards Reggie, but T pulls you away. Reggie shouts for you to go, go; he knows what’s happening to him and doesn’t want you to meet the same fate.

Joy doesn’t give up on you. She knows who you were, who you are, who you might be. She can see what might be possible for you, even if you can’t see for yourself.