Aspasia

I wonder where I’ll be a year from now. To save myself the trouble, I avoid being too prescriptive. I imagine myself feeling good, but the rest is amorphous. Today I feel free. The sun is out. The sky returns after a long hiatus, its delicate blue summit zeniths into ivory, then pink. It’s almost sunset. I’ve been trying hard to be productive whilst tempering the need to unmask, which unearths fatigue settling like sand in my limbs. I wonder if it will resolve itself. What does fatigue resolve into?

The soft honey bass of a Neo-Soul song battles memes of conversations that spice the café's atmosphere. I’m sitting in my usual seat. Three-minute segments compensate for momentary breaks between songs. I can hardly tune it all out. I am aching and heavy. My head tugs at my shoulders, knotting my trapezius, tightening my throat.

He’s still there, our memories effervesce emancipating globules of anger. I take a bellyful breath and imagine myself spewing locusts and cyclones. I pay attention to the voice I’ve often ignored and let go of the advice prescribed by the people I choose to reveal myself to. They parse advice with downturned eyes and pursed lips. I accept the pity and their need to help. I let go of the politics.

I am protective of my anger. I don’t want to let it go. I am righteous in its rousing. It birthed a whole new me, fermented in an ancient power. This is a reclamation, an assertion of my right to be. I am not faultless. I am not blameless. I am washed and sanctified in the rage boxed up in my belly. I’ve arrived here with pride, laden with the load of my time, carrying the remnant of who came before me. I am purposeful in finding and liberating a new vision of myself. I am Woman now.

Reading “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name” by Audre Lorde, I was suspended between New York and Antigua, Jamaica and England. The immigrant experience shape shifts with an essential quality I cannot abstract. If I call it grit, it's cliché, and I yield to those who frame my oppression as a hero’s journey to absolve themselves of the work of unpicking and sorting through their responsibility. I call it grace. 

Rigid structures skeleton my childhood and threaten to calcify my adult self. I try to destruct and unravel the loose ends I can find, most of them are bound up and inaccessible except through time and conscious effort. I wonder in the faces of strangers searching for signs of The Struggle so I can relate or relieve myself of the load I’m carrying. It’s an existential experience that could unite us, but mostly I find pre-packaged differences. My vision blurs the edges of what’s threatening into digestible chunks. I swallow the rest to nourish myself and remain unmoved but transformed in the wake of my self-imposed segregation.

Ice blue locomotives are more quake than calm. It’s only recently that I find myself able to stand the acid consequences of self-inquiry. I squeal and writhe to avoid the heart of the matter, a dexterous and compulsive process. I've decided to seek fiercely. I am resolute, my fists planted akimbo, my chest shooting skyward. I am here. I stomp my feet and expire, dragon's breath.

I want to be loved. It’s a general statement with specific requirements I am often too afraid to express. I miniaturise then stash my desires in the corners of my eyes where they oxidise into soma. And retrieve them only after the fact, just in time to feel disempowered by my actions. Shame conceals the truth, storing enlightenment just out of reach. In time I hope I’ll find my way home. I want to speak plainly. I want to feel brave enough to be free. But chains rattle as I move closer to the boundaries I’ve inherited. I read a headline that said you inherit your nervous system from your parents. Does this mean my mother knows how I feel? Can she understand me more than I give her credit for? Intuitively I remind myself of the last time, dismantling hope as it cradles the dreams my Little One nurses. Little One is what I call my inner child. When her ground melts, she invades and rules with unrivalled dominance. Negotiations are fruitless, and when the symptoms coalesce, I must patiently incubate her and move through the stages of recovery. It can be hours, days, weeks before any relief.

Chaos and nature reveal patterns in the forms I perceive. I am afraid to let go, so I construct machinery that shelters me under pinion. I stuff my pockets with all I can carry and slither unnoticed from view.