Nina Simone – I Can’t See Nobody (Daniel Y. Remix)

“I’m really here,” I thought. I was standing in the balcony, the bright floor waxy and red beneath me, watching your father walk towards the entrance on the ground floor. He looked old and unexpectedly fragile, his shoulders and slender chest bent beneath his pressed white shirt, as he crossed the dirt path in front of your house. He paused at the iron gate, one hand reaching for his keys and I tightened my grip on the balustrade. It curved reassuringly firmly beneath my fingers, real. It was mid-afternoon. That day it was still out, the traffic had slowed so that the thoroughfare at the end of the street was quieter than usual, and the metal bar was cool against my palm.

“I’m here,” I thought. I could hear you moving inside, walking to the balcony’s door, about to come stand beside me and as I turned my head towards your footsteps, I thought, “I’m really here and this is not a dream.”

I woke up a few minutes later. I stared at the ceiling and I felt as though I’d swallowed light, as though I’d been painstakingly hollowed out and filled with something intangible, a glow pulsing along my diaphragm.

A night a week later I was there again, in a different part of the city. It was night now, crowded with the noise of water. As though I were really there and really had been there seven nights ago, I remembered my last trip, remembered that particular combination of stillness and cool on that balcony, and the sound of you at my back like heat. “I was here last week,” I said, over the noise, to you, speaking to your bemused and concerned eyes.
Continue reading this entry »