Small Worlds

by Caleb Azumah Nelson

To go back home is to wrangle with who you are against who everyone thinks you should be.

It must be a strange feeling, that this place my parents have longed for, a place they used to call home, could also reject them in their current form, could ask them to be someone else.

It’s so quiet here. It’s just us. It’s like someone has turned down the volume, so we might better hear what’s being said. That’s when she says, I’m close, and I know I am too. I take a knot of her fresh braids in fist and she gasps, eyes ablaze, the graze of her finger on skin becoming a scratch, our whole beings overcome, closer, still, rhythm, happening, everywhere, until for a few moments, we let everything else cease to exist. It’s just us, in our small world.

I miss you too. Miss that look you have when you discover a new song, the way your hand feels in mine, the warmth of your cheek when you hug me and I can feel your smile. I miss the way you make me feel: beautiful and free, like anything is possible.

Better means being open. It means allowing yourself to surrender. It means saying things which are honest and true, Godlike even. It means leaning into the quiet, even when it’s loud with echoes of the past.

We move like mirrors, haunting the space with our motion, our bodies free and flailing and loose. I’m pulled to tap my father on the shoulder, to try to say to him, I wish we could always be this open, but I don’t know either of us have the words. So instead, we build each other a small world, our solos swelling, rising like a chorus, forward as he goes back, back as he goes forward, our hands to our chest in reverence, building a church with our rhythm, a place we don’t have to explain, a place where we can be honest and true; Godlike, even. A place we can both surrender.