Up to the abandoned railway line I go.

Dear Friends and Care-Givers Everywhere,

This is something they don't talk about in the movies. It ain't hip. It ain't cool. There ain't no romance.

After the pandemic gone, there won't be cafes and restaurants for some, no travels to exotic lands. No selfies to show off to envying pals and strangers ooogling, Whaa, beautiful, oh wow.

When the pandemic done, there gon be men and women, still at home, fulfilling the needs of our elderlies, struggling to understand what it must be like for them, why they do and say the things they do and say, what is causing that unhealable sharp pain in they spirit, why some o' them give up.

Instead o' trekking up hills that flaunt they white scarf-mist like lovely ladies, we gon be here down below, trying to pull wesselves up from the land running deplete.

I feel like me writerly-self shrivel and fall to the ground. 

It is love that make me stay, right here on the ground, waiting for the rain. It is love that make me try to refresh meself, right here on the ground.

And right here, on this foreign ground, I pick meself up, go for early morning walk to the lake after the rain from the night before. The breeze full o' the promise rain, it beating a song. 

This morning, I walk the other way, under the tree with the jasmine perfume, to the big plot o' land with a glorious fragrance from somewhere else that I can't remember. I hope them folks who live across that plot o' land full o' bush don't think I crazy when I stop to smile and inhale in the morning light. 

Towards the abandoned railway line I go, I stare along the rail and smile some more.

One day, I gon get a car, I gon pack up food, and Ma painkillers and back brace, and me and she gon go to the sea.