No Matter!

No Matter!

5/18/2026

I walk around with the devil in my head — and the devil is my dance. As soon as I hear the music, my body, my head, my mind, my soul dance on the wind, in the street, in the air, everywhere.

I cannot live without the dance!

I move, I move, I move. I turn and slide into my waist, moving in my hips, my shoulders sliding into the movement, sliding into the breathing in my head.

Another summer, another summer of heat and sweat and mosquitoes and flies and hot beaches and hot sand and boardwalk walks, sand in my toes, wet sand pressing back against my bare feet, coconut water out of the blue soft ecological water bottle, trips to the gym, walks in the park — and I miss the tropical sun that made my skin deep, deep brown, bananas that taste like soft sweet sugar, mangoes just as they come into season, breadfruit that made you so full after one chew and swallow, cassava pounded in my grandmother’s mortar into a soft, pasty coo coo.

Every year I get further and further away from all that.

No matter how many pictures I look at, no matter how many calls I make to who is left, no matter how many texts from cousins and brothers and sisters, no matter how many trips I take to see all the blood I have left, it is never the same — never the same taste in my mouth, my ears, my soul.

I am left lonelier than I ever was before.

Is this loneliness the friend I once had a long, long time ago, a long, long time ago, when I cried and beat and beat on my chest as though to beat the pain out of my body? No food, no sleep, no thoughts, only the long loneliness I spoke to, slept with, hugged, that after a long, long time became a friend I knew inside and outside.

Yes, it is summer again.

So I walk around with the devil in my head — and the devil is my dance. As soon as I hear the music, my body, my head, my mind, my soul dance on the wind, in the street, in the air, everywhere.

And it is not a loneliness, it is not an aloneness, it is not a where-have-they-all-gone feeling. It is a being inside my being, a solidity, a knowledge that the world ends at the edge of my skin.