On Leaving (Again) and Thoughts that Have No Words

“During the time between ending one project and beginning another, I always have a crisis of meaning.” – bell hooks

There are instances. Instances when I will stand still outside amongst the bustle of life and close my eyes and imagine that I am as alone as I sometimes feel. There is a deep well of emotions that is filled in such times. Wells that let you know that there are feelings beyond sadness in such solitary notions; that these are the very feelings of life itself.

I unpack my bags and learn new motions; memorizing the winding streets and voices of a new frontier. I familiarize myself with new smells and ways of being; footprints leaving paths to ‘home’. I pack my bags and wonder about unlearning new motions; I figure out the ways of being to incorporate, the ones to hold. And I begin to shed the others. I leave the keys and shut the door, and I begin again.

I have been writing. And I’ve been writing and writing and writing, and yet I feel as though there are things I have yet to say that rest locked up in the tips of my finger upon the tip of my tongue. They are swimming around in my thoughts as though I could not produce the words. there is language that has been stolen here, words that English cannot describe. They will tell you it’s your mother tongue, but it is foreign. My mouth rounds the words as though biting off brittle and bitter pieces of realities.

It is when I am forced to suspend myself in this place of timelessness that I find the seeds of rejuvenation. And while ‘funemployment’ for most involves traversing across the expanses of the earth, getting lost in adventures, I, instead, go home to be ‘found’—reading Nayyirah to put salt in wounds, hooks to remind me of practices of freedom, and closing my eyes to find the right words.