Emi

èmi as in myself/me/i, èémí as in breath, ẹ̀mí as in life/spirit/soul

I used to dream. Those were different years, younger years, far away years filled with yearning and hope and bitter bitter bitter loss. I used to dream of grand things: beaten paths that you could find unwinding themselves underneath a thicket, into lush gardens where the floor is littered with agbalumo, big and juicy. Beautiful things: bees that whispered which flower smelt the best when you asked. I dreamt once of eating under the stars in a land very far from my home with a lover by me. I dreamt of useless things like that. Dreams, as useless as fog. I dream no longer. I dare not. I am too old to dream. To dream now is undignified. The years have been demanding, they have withered me to the bone, they have collected tax on each breath, they have asked a question of my worth. The years keep asking questions of my worth. Questions like this are difficult to answer on a good day — talk less when your head is filled with worthless treacle. The years have demanded sterility of thought, so that they might receive my answers. My answers are the sum of my being. My answers are my worth. My answers are that I am fifty-two and I have afforded myself the luxury of a house. I am tall, a man of excellent pedigree, but with a slight curve in my back as proof of appropriate burden. A curve in which the weight of this house and a small car and a pleasant wife and two happy children sit square. Life asked and I replied: look at me! A dependable thing! In the stead of dreams, at night, there is the void. I stare into it. It does not call to me, does not tempt me to leap. It is just that. Space devoid of thought, of breathing, or being — space, a tarp I swaddle myself in nightly before I rock myself to sleep.

I believe myself as a man. I believe myself as a man to be envied. My house is far away from the land I call home. In this regard, I have given my children more placid tongues — tongues that lay flatter in the mouth, allowing the letter R to rumble further back in the throat before exploding past the palate and the lips. On to other matters of my success — my wife is cherished by all. She is proper. I am proper. We are a proper unit. Out in the world, we have become the subject of dreamers, our lives the object of their useless dreams.

I did not get here by accident. I have worked hard, flattened what was furled, purged what was unimportant. I am now accomplished. It is what I am. It is the answer to a question. I am fifty-two and accomplished. Fifty-two and married. Fifty-two with children. Fifty-two with a house in a different country for my wife and children and all my accomplishments. I am who I am.

In the present, I am promised many more years as a reward for my dreamless nights. I am promised acres. I am promised rest. I go to work in the waning days of this hard work. I sit in the office. I joke. I offer orders. I am asked more questions. Questions about the wife. She is happy and well. Questions about the kids. They are thriving, basking in privilege. Questions about reports. They have been completed and we are ahead of revenue predictions for this quarter. I go home and eat good food. I close my eyes. I pull the tarp over my warm body and settle into the dark of night. I do not dream.

I do the same the next day. And the next day. And the next day. And next, over and over, until one day the pressure that had been building in my arm spreads, pulling in my chest, and then neck, and the jaw towards the centre left of my chest, warping my life in agony, until my heart shudders to a stop and I drop on the floor outside my office. I am dying. I am dying. I am dying. I am dead.

***

I am here. I am no longer whole and I am here. I was elsewhere, else concerned, doing shit else. I must have had shit luck because now I am here. I am a part. This is a new whole. I used to be whole. I used to be a part in a whole, wholly me. I used to be many things, wholly me. I used to do many things too. Life is for the living, life is for the dreamers. Life is for the people who can dream big big big worlds and then put foot to pavement, walking through fog and sparkling sheen, step after step, step at a time, discovering these worlds. Listening for these worlds. Feeling for them, the grain shifting in patterns under fingertips, mighty forms erupting out of the fog. I used to discover worlds like this and become many things. I was a ruler of several small but mighty kingdoms hidden in the fog. I used to be twenty-five. I used to play tennis. I used to skateboard. I used to write. I was published once. I learned a pop shove-it on my third try. I was an offensive baseliner with a killer backstroke; I could have gone pro. I did so many things. I was so many things to so many people. They said it was because I listened. I did everything with an ear pointed to the wind. I found that everything in the world whispers. Dulcet tongues weave incantations into the air, threading it like smooth fabric, leaving the grooves for all those who want to find it. No one listens anymore. No one dreams anymore. I used to be in love. I was in love. I knew of its shapes and forms. I found it again and again in people, this small centre, a warm core, hidden away from everyone but a few. I cherished it. I cradled it like a candle flickering in the wind. I found it time and time again, until I was surrounded by candles flickering in the wind. I do not know how it happened that I stopped being a whole. I must have had shit luck crossing the road or something. But all of a sudden, I have now become a part of a new whole. I am an old part, anew. I am a new part of the old.

***

I was dead. I was dying and dying and dying, and then I was supposed to be dead. It was bizarre — death. I was. Then I simply wasn’t. And then I was again. The doctors say it was a small miracle. I wasn’t for eight minutes. They say the small miracle was not in my survival, but: in the fact someone on the other side of the office swore they heard someone call my name, in the fact that the office was empty as a hole, in the fact this someone was chased by a growing warmth spreading from the tile to my office, in the fact that there was a recent unbecoming, so there would be no wait. This recent death was a registered organ donor, a willing heart, a young Serena. Perhaps these things are miraculous. I do not know. What was miraculous to me was that, the first night after I awoke, I had a dream.

I closed my eyes and swaddled myself in the void and stared into the dark, unflinching emptiness, expecting to find nothing. Instead, I see a face. I see a face seeing me. A part of a whole, peering through the darkness, rising from nothing. Face extends to neck to shoulders to torso, a new born, half born in the recesses of my consciousness. I look at them and they look through me. I am old and they are young, their face is taut where mine slacks, their lower jaw sharp where mine dulls. I am now whole because of them, I sense. They are part of a new whole. I am whole due to a part of them. They are now part of what I am. I am different parts making up a whole.

I feel different now. I am fifty-two, but my soul bucks. I am in bed healing and I can’t stop yearning for a run. I am recovering, walking slow, chewing slow, healing slow, and yet I race through sentences. I quiz the nurses. I can’t stop listening. I hear a lot these days. I hear too much. I did not know the world was full of so many discordant melodies. I hear birds bicker, I hear the nurses gossip, I hear shoes squeak on linoleum, I hear the call of the void — the young person twisting their way out of the shadows, calling to me, I hear paper slide on thin paper, I hear my sons grumble about visiting me yet again, I hear my wife tiredly tell them to hush, I hear the tail end of a skateboard pop off concrete, I hear Life’s inane questions.

I did not know there were these many melodies.

I find that I stopped listening when I stopped dreaming. I stopped listening to anything other than life asking me for the sum of my worth. It was the important question, and a good life was the search for the answer. But now I am in bed, and I am listening. The vacuum imploded and was replaced with rushing noise and I am listening to it all. I feel tears rush to my eyes when my sons mumble very little and spend their visiting hours staring at the ceiling. In their grumbling, I can hear where the road back home breaks, the hole where their ancestry has fallen. I can hear their grand-father, his father, and an eternity of back-bent men, shouting from a pit.

I listen to the way my wife’s voice sinks, drowning itself before the end of every sentence. She tells the boys to speak to Daddy, and I hear the inflection that is her gentle coercion, her unknowing acknowledgement that she, like them, was there out of obligation. When the boys traipse to the commissary to buy snacks, I ask little of my wife. It is a simple question. It is a stupid question. We were a proper family, were we not? The wife was happy and well. The kids were basking and thriving in privilege. I look at her as I ask. She looks through me. I listen to her silence and its answers are deafening. The kids come back and stare at the ceiling some more.

I am healing and healing and healing. I am mostly healed. I run now. Besides me, the world gallops. I out-run cars because the world turns towards me. My feet slap against concrete, thump thump thump. My heart pumps in my ears. I listen to it all. I have been listening a lot now. To my wife, when she wanted to leave the house after all these years. To my children, when they went with her. I have learned that she’s been unhappy for years. I have learned that the boys despise their school; they despise how little they fit in, home or abroad. Black abroad, with the foreigners’ tongue. I have learned that because their tongues have been flattened from birth, breaking them in new ways is difficult. I have learned that yes and amen have never been love languages. I learned that there is such a thing as earning love, as finding it, as searching for a person’s core, glowing bright wherever they might be hiding it.

 

I do not say a lot. I say useless things like sorry. I let them leave. I run. I dream.

I dream of one day reaching my lover and our children once more, so I can simply eat under the stars with them by me, in this land very far from home.

END