On Liminal Space

Lately, I’ve been thinking about liminal space. The space between what is and what is to be. Or the space after the end of a rite of passage, but not quite the commencement of another. It’s also the space I’ve been inhabiting over the last couple of months.

I was apprehensive of this space. I knew this stillness was coming after returning home from living a vibrant life overseas. The pandemic has only compounded this space and like for most people this pandemic has brought so many feelings of isolation and alienation to the surface. It’s been a very weird and existential year that has prompted me to ask myself a lot of questions, but it feels like a lot even for a ‘weirdo’ like me who relishes in the absurd and abstract.

Some days I am comforted by the sound of my father chopping away at the kitchen or my mother knocking on the door to drop off a fresh load of folded laundry. There’s something cozy about being home and knowing during this uncertainty you can be with the ones you love and who cherish you the most. Other days, I find the added quietness and humdrum of everyday life absolutely unbearable. My mind trails to places I don’t want to go. I find myself yearning for a chapter of my life that has long closed and the future seems like an extra intangible space that is out of reach. And I know I am not normally this nostalgic or this ahead of myself, but the ‘present’ also seems not here either.

I find myself missing simple things like being able to sit at a coffee shop for hours unbothered and yet comforted by the people clicking away at their laptops nearby, but today I went on a four mile walk. The wind was brisk rather than brick for what seems like the first time in two months. I took my headphones off, listened as the birds cooed, and bikes moved swiftly past me. I felt the sunlight on my face and overlooked as the sun hit the tops of trees- giving them a pretty auburn color. And I remembered that I am here. For today, that is enough.

Champagne Problem

I know these things happen in epochs-

Some seal into your bones and others break marrow.

I just guess yesterday,

I wasn’t counting on counting tomorrow.

If I scrape harder, will I cut?

And if I remember to forget

Will the city forget to remember me back?

And if I shed now, 

Will I have to shed again?

And if these old cells need to die-

Will I ever mend?

And if I do nothing, will I stay?

Will the years I spent keep the worst of me at bay?

And if I run. will I run again?

Or will I always be hellbent- on finding home?

And I’m scared to death that the world that yesterday 

Seemed so vast, now is gone, and overly compact.

And if home isn’t a place, a self, or a heart

Will I ever learn the art – of letting go?

Or am I destined forever to be a rolling stone?

But if it’s true what if they say about cells

Could I find a way to hold space

For the next of me to sell?

And hell, if I make this promise, will it just be between 

Me and you?

And if I ossify and change into someone you don’t like

Will you promise to see the next phase of me through?

And I knew these times they are a changin’

I just next expected the rest of my life to arrive so soon.

But if I stay here longer, maybe I won’t disintegrate or break

And if I don’t go back maybe I can find a way 

For the rest of me to stay.