Leaving

Spread out in various states of recline around a long table in the inner room of the Indian restaurant we have gathered in, I imagine we cast a scene not too dissimilar to [the last supper.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(Leonardo_da_Vinci) Not only are we thirteen (ignoring for a moment that S is barely 9 months old), it is a last supper of sorts, pulled together to celebrate the two J’s, in these their final days up here before they up sticks and move to study not too far off from ground zero in America’s bible belt. That we’ve plopped for Indian cuisine is perhaps a slight oddity given all thirteen of us have African roots. I suspect it is more indicative of the paucity of suitable eating options than adventure, which is why phones come out when it is time to order; google comes to the rescue. All that drags out the ordering process, which has a knock on effect on when we get our food. ...

Source: What you lose in the breaking, and the leaving, and in the tearing up of things is not the weight of the burden of a flailing we, unravelling as it were, beneath the weight of the angst the uncertainty of ambivalent inquiry weaves in its wake. What you gain is not peace, or freedom, or the sense of soaring free; a relief craved like cold water on a blistering summer day - a breath drawn deep, air gulped a sigh of resignation at the certainty of leaving. ...

For Mag 267 You and I are sweeping up the shards of something blithely broken, something shattered into a thousand jagged things, by this weight, this unshifting burden of this we, we nearly were. There is leaving, and then this, Leaving, headed west, chasing closure, across the valley, beyond which there is no returning.