[Hello, just a reminder that the Mquzama Book Review Blog has moved to substack. This blog post can be found on the Mquzama substack page here. New book reviews are being posted exclusively on Substack and this Medium Page will be discontinued soon]
Twice a year, we meet at the coffee shop near the funeral home. In the first days, we were nothing but kids, our grief carefully balanced in our words. Pretending. Pretending we had not cried so much, we could trace the very path any tear took on our rugged cheeks. Pretending our disdain for violence wasn’t because it was too close to death. Pretending it all made sense. Later, we wouldn’t have to. I think we knew that from that first day.
We never talked about the love we lost but our scars whispered to each other. They shared the love that remained and divided the grief. Maybe that’s why we always went back. Once with the rains of March and again in the heat of October. The coffee shop never changed. The conversations more intense, our shoulders lighter.
We understood that the hollowness never came because death consumed our guiding light, tore through years of affection and shattered walls and walls of safety. Rather the resignation that when you lose so much of yourself so early, there is not enough of you left to hold the broken pieces together. Not nearly enough to give your all to someone else. We understood this the same way we understood that beyond those walls, everything we feared was on the loose. We understood.
Every time we hold hands, I feel the jagged pieces moving into place. Still broken, but felt at least. We know what it means. We know what it means when you are only alive around the familiar scent of death and an Americano.
My Unpublished Series is for my random loose writing (because calling it my personal journal sounds more pretentious than it is supposed to look)
