Small Worlds

by Caleb Azumah Nelson

when was the last time we surrendered? When was the last time we were this open?

What becomes of time when summer arrives?

was there that I noticed I only really knew myself in song. In the quiet, in the freedom, in the surrender.

Mum asks each of us to shuffle in so that we fit in the frame for a photo. I wonder what she sees in this moment, what she wants to commit to celluloid, what she might want to hold, forever.

idk this just sounds so beautiful and magical

By midnight, the party is beginning to wane; emotions are fraught, and some begin to cry. We’ve known each other for the better part of seven years. This is all we’ve known. We hold each other, close, as the music stops and the lights go up. We’re all seeing each other here, really seeing each other, the fullness of our lives apparent in this moment of strange grief. We continue to hold each other, heads buried into shirts, tender palms gripping forearms, insisting we’ll link up, insisting we’ll keep in touch. Insisting the only thing between us is love.

which is not to sleep at all. I don’t understand that away from the view of her children, Mum took my father aside, saying, ‘Homo ye mi. Etomi.’ Hunger has taken me. I’m tired to the depths of my being.

I hear the snippets from behind the closed door, my mother’s voice saying, Homo ye mi. Etomi. Hunger has taken me.

Funny what we remember, what palaces we build to house these fragments.

I’ve never seen my father cry, but he looks close. The water is a kind threat, the sheen on his eyes like a glimmer, a sad glint. I wonder what fragment has bled into his day, wonder what wound of his I cannot see. What might haunt him. I wish I could ask. I wish we could be that open.

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.

Her life is informed by loss but because she’s lost, she loves and loves freely, openly, with all she can.

Life is too short to be holding back, she’ll say.

I mourn the safety. I mourn our rhythms. I mourn the loop. I mourn the space. I cry until there’s nothing left.

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’ve only known myself in song, in the space between the sounds we make to capture our quiet. The music conjures a time when I was more open, a time when I had more faith.

My frustration multiplies, thickens, and because anger is so close to love, I go there.

I don’t sleep that night because to sleep with grief is not to sleep at all.

She asks how I am, have I eaten? I say no, but homo ye mi. I’m hungry. What I do not say is that I am hungry for something I have lost.

I know that grief makes language useless, and that only sounds might suffice, so I let out a dull hum, a shattered gasp.

In the distance she holds him, to see if he’ll come closer, because sometimes it’s not enough just to say it, you have to show it too.

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 to ask him what he dreamed of, where he went to find freedom, do you know this feeling, this sadness on my shoulders?

I leave, walking out into the late afternoon of an early summer, when everything should be blossoming, everything should feel new and beautiful. I pray then, like I’ve never prayed before, asking not for money, or a job, but that this new world I’m walking out into, this new world I’m building for myself, I ask that it be constructed from peace.

I came to both languages through violence: the Ga I speak was warped and muted, many years ago, after British invasions, the same invasions which are the reason I speak English.

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.

‘You angry?’ I nod. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Anger is just love in another body.’

‘History is haunting them boys, so they’re out on the street, haunting the city. We’re all haunted in some way. All my dance moves are my father’s. I know every time you play the horn, each note is thick with all that’s come before. You see what’s happening, we’re seeing what happens when a solo is silenced.

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.

What happens to those who don’t have the room to express their ache, are unable to tell their stories? What happens to these histories which might only be spoken?

I feel like a stranger in the only place I’ve called home, but I try to push away the apprehension, the feeling of being unwanted. I try to be open.

I try to leave behind this ache, which has long made a home in the left side of my chest, but I fear this is the shape of the world now. I fear it might be forever.

She’s asking if I remember us. ‘I think we were happy then,’ she says. ‘We were. Something like that.’

We all fear the phone calls or text messages, which remind us that outside of these spaces, we are rarely safe. Remind us that dreaming is difficult when we feel like we’re so close to death. Remind us that the world was not built with us in mind, and that someone, at any time, might intrude upon our homes, crumbling our walls, making dust of our foundations.

I open my mouth to call for someone, but there’s no voice, no rhythm, no music. I open my mouth to call for someone, but there’s no one here to tend to my grief. I open my mouth to call for someone, but the world is so quiet now. I’m all alone.

I wonder if they too are struggling to comprehend such immense loss, such extraordinary grief. And I’m thinking, how does one begin to comprehend such loss when it does not stop?

I remember what Uncle T said about anger, how it’s just love in another body, but right now, it doesn’t feel like that, it feels like something rotten rattling about my body, it feels like the thing which could consume me.

Nii hears a song which moves something in him and gestures for us to dance, and since the alcohol is dizzying around my body, I’m bold and audacious, flinging my limbs with what I mistake for freedom, all my dance moves my father’s, and his father’s before that, because the dead never leave. They’re in the slink of our hips, the swing of our limbs, in our whispers, our screams, our ecstasy.

My gaze asks the questions I want to: Who are you? Who were you? What do you dream of? Where do you find freedom? Tell me of movement, migration, burden, of having to choose which parts of your life to keep, which to let fall away. Tell me you know this feeling which haunts me sometimes, this sadness on my shoulders. After a long exhale, Pops opens his mouth to tell me what he can remember, what he cannot forget.