Mimi na Berlin[i],
I, and Berlin[1]
I with the nostalgia of recent flailing with the wind, the weight of my body on two spinning wheels past Feld Tempelhof, and the traffic lights greening me on, swayed, bobbed, sprung to the beats so loud they seemed to come from the deepest recesses of the stomach, the soul, bodies and stroboscope red, blue, hazy, moved to avoid over-fizzing beer with tales of loss, of love, of ambition, of dissolving, by a bridge where a man danced to music that only he heard, waited hours in a queue with began-as-strangers-become-transient-friends one night and the following night got whisked in as royalty,
I slept once in U6 and was lulled to dreams by aussteigen bitte and einsteigen bitte, walked innumerably from U Alt-Mariendorf to our red home because the 181 bus retires at midnight, an early deadline for throbbing intentions, for the late sunsets that the summer gifts, and breezes that chase sleep away, so we walked the twenty minutes, recounting adventures, childhoods, recalling past ghosts, incanting dreams,
I, who met German as an occurrence in a school in Nairobi, speak it to instruct a pilau recipe to an Egyptian as we break bread with bodies from far and near who have found home here, or haven’t, to a brilliant mind as we savour French 75s and other loosening concotions, watching the sun goodbye us through irradiated clouds after a downpour, to a child who wonders if I am two years as old as herself and why my skin is sehr dark, to a Turkish who has unearthed histories in Izmir, to search after and realize plans, to write on generational identities and your lessons, to understand a song sitting on a pillow in an intimate café in Neukölln, a film on angels envying humans at Friedrichshain,
I met traces of home in cooking chapati with malenge with a friend who has traversed, as I, continents and border-controls and has eyes set on the future, spoke Swahili, who reminds me of Nairobi and high school in cobbled streets that bump me like the constantly potholed Roysambu-Mwiki road, remet people in different ways who embodied life’s varying mysteries, drinking an iced drink at U Merringdam as an adjacent stranger knocked twice on our table and said machs gut, merry unabashed,
I once chased the M1 train with a just-met-tonight friend to see a Batman movie, and again chased the sunset, meandering in a red bike, blue wheels, through trodden brown paths, green canopies and chanced on a field of swaying grass under stratus clouds, chased the traffic lights when amber, crashing my phone and shouts of was ist los, feeling sad and lonely and strangely at peace, taking random turns, pedaling and heading away, past Heidestraße and blooming flowers, still waters and swans, past one saying to a friend sitting by the river with their bikes parked in the shade and the water lapping close to them that “the scariest thing about climate change is going to be immigration”, past one who was about to cross the road and the light turned red midway and she hesitated and she smiled at me when she saw that I had witnessed her dilemma of discipline, green and skies and blue, past and below and over and by bridges, past a group gathered around an wooden lunch table outside, surrounded by flowers and cheery noises and a pink banner hanging by the door reading “it’s a girl”, fortuned by my favourite Kenyan author who spoke of contradictions and your wounds,
I ate out at a Pakistani restaurant that my friend confessed tasted like the real deal, wolfed kebabs and döners, all the ones that start out delicious and halfway turn out revolting once the hunger has subsided, 50 cents bier, the YAAM beach where I was heighted for hours, the egg sandwich I had with Shenghan that tasted heaven redefined and bookshops, to finding a German novel on the U Bahn that I probably will never read but I will keep, a comic book on creation in a bar with couches that absorb fatigue by Golitzer Park,
I, when a request for a lighter by my window ended up in a chatter, looking at a Kleingartenanlag and him telling me that he is studying quantum computing to defeat mortality, that my reasoning of the joy of living being in its ephemerality is but fear masked in an excuse, lost contact in bodies of colour and regained composure by sitting by a curb, on a bench in a park, in the S-Bahn, outside, with swarming bees, wasps, chatter and clinks clinks clinks mmmmmmms of wine,
I, in the twilight of dawn, by the Spree overlooking the Oberbaumbrücke at a lady who answered my curiosity about her tatoo on her upper back with a you really want to know? and to my yes, looked me with eyes so tender and piercing and told me it was her aborted child. The same night, in delirium and watchfulness, I met someone who had a cure to economic inequality, a sort of system of sharing wealth, I found someone who was from Somalia but had been to Russia and now, like me, is studying the migration of bodies and the place and un-placing of humanness, sat across a heart of truth outside the Mensa and rediscovered why we need to breathe,
I rested after a day of discovering a city that pulsates with one I admire and looked at trains bringing and ferrying away, as we talked of futures and presents, as we talked about being outsiders, looking in and on worlds, being part of and removed from worlds, choosing and being chosen, as she held my hand and wished me the best in life, that I would not waste it, bared my soul to clothe it in ideas of wholeness one night as the moon shone and a friend restructured reason,
I hoard the words spoken and unspoken, glances and twitches and movements of the heart, the heat of air, of harshness, of searing existence in its joys, frustrations, excesses,
and I say to you, friend, auf Wiedersehen.
[1] modelled on I, New York by Lam Lai. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 11, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
[i] goodbyes, for many reasons, can be exacting. I think the prospect of parting ways rearranges memories, remakes memories. So please consider the possibility that my effusion is subject to rearrangements, omissions and its accuracy subject to skews.