Monday's are hard. Some Monday's are impossible. You know... you know those Monday's, you wake up your body aching, your head somewhere else, somewhere between that world and this one... and you don't want to see people, you just want to stay in your room all day and stare at the pale ceiling of your prison room and wait for it to pass--- it's all you have, a deep desire for solitude, a feeling of melancholia-and it won't go away, the malaise, you know it so you wake up and get dressed in the same old clothes and you float through the day half alive, just trying to survive...---- there on the grass, the pink cherry blossom falls gently to the ground, the pigeons fly in unison, there alone, with other loners: there alone, wanting nothing more than to go home. Home.
And in trying to get through, you barely make it, but then you force yourself to go the distance. I travelled up North, ran for miles, swam and swam. I told a stranger I miss Somalia. I miss my Hooyo. Walaahi I miss my Hooyo. I miss the promise of the holy month, I miss the time that faded. I swam, I ran, I waited.... for nothing. I breathed in the twilight, the bright night sky, the full moon so gold, the stars above the ancient cemetery. You and I. And everything makes you feel something, something inexplicable- between sorrow and a dream that will never be realised; for we're all going to die before we come to realise, anything worth realising. And so like the dreadlocks that went down to his knees, like the little Jewish boys and their fathers, dressed in their dignified attire, like the reflections on the water of the pool, the soft zen music, the grumpy old woman who talks to herself....
And so I got the bus some place, gym bag weighing me down, key dangling from the zip of my khaki hoody, eyes half open. Still not there.... not nearly there. And then when you get there, to that beautiful mosque in the night, you there alone. Except there's another, an old African woman chanting soft praises to God. But you alone, You alone. You not alone. You've come home. And you throw your bag to the floor and make sujood, tears streaming down your face. I'm home. Lord I'm not alone. You're with me. I give myself to you.
