Small Worlds

by Caleb Azumah Nelson

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 think this happens often to many of us, this language we have less tool than burden, caught between somewhere, something lost between expression and emotion. Sometimes, silence in the face of trauma is useful. It allows time for those grieving to mourn, to organize, for a feeling to lose its haze and ossify, and to try to give words to what has been done unto us. And if not words, then sound, music, rhythm, an ah, a gasp, a hum, a groan, spillage, deluge. But a continued silence, this might consume us.

I stay steady, placing my hand just below the surface, the motion of the ocean like a mother’s caress. I look up and the haze has cleared, the sky the water’s mirror. The sea swells and rises like a chorus; a small wave rises from the depths, slapping me in the chest. I speak back to the water: Miiŋa bo. I am greeting you. Me shwe bo. I miss you. Kaa fo. Don’t cry. After a few minutes, I turn away but not before pausing once more at the break, where water meets land, where spirit meets earth, and there, as another small wave emerges, swelling, rising, just before the fall, the whisper of a spirit at rest, not saying goodbye or farewell, but soon.