THE QUANTUM PHYSICS THEY DON’T TEACH

BY VICTORIOUS N. MAJAZI

Alexa, Play Tears of a Silent Heart by Michael Ortega

I began writing when I was young, maybe seven or eight years old. Yet, even earlier, I could tell the most captivating stories; an active imagination and a creative mind, my mom used to call it. As I grew, my ability to alchemise my feelings developed. The stories got more heartbreaking, and the poetry sadder. Pain, just like time, is not linear.

Ever since I was young, I had this feeling of sadness and loss that just never left me. Almost like something had been taken from me, and I couldn’t remember what or why or even who took it. I think that’s when my mind and my spirit began to tussle; one knew what the other didn’t, and yet somehow both seemed to have to carry the proverbial cross together. The understanding that time is not linear came in 2021, with loss. I think the first time you experience the death of someone you love, you are supposed to be shaken. Except I wasn’t.My spirit had worked hard to help me remember that I had been here before. My mind prepared itself. And when the other shoe dropped, there was no screaming or rolling on the ground and thrashing; there was only a quiet exhale. For the first time in over twenty years, I felt like my mind and my spirit were not fighting anymore. My mind understood what my spirit had always known. A quiet relief.

Finally, the pain I had carried made sense, albeit through the worst possible scenario. It was 0034 Saturday, 10 July 2021, when my mind and my spirit held hands for the first time. That’s the exact moment I woke up. The pain had almost punched a hole through time. I read all the poetry I had ever written, every story, all of it a quiet cry of a child who was experiencing grief before she had any comprehension of what grief was. The loss of the truest love, the strongest love. As angry as I was that I had to carry loss, it occurred to me that the reason pain had to ripple back in time and trickle through twenty-four years was because if it had all come down on me, I would have died with her, of that I have no doubt.

So it had to go back and forth in time so I could survive a loss that should have killed me. I saw a girl who suffered a similar loss. Maybe for her, pain didn’t go back and bind itself to her DNA as mine did; perhaps it all came down on her all at once because it killed her. It killed her. Grief can kill you. I think my mother knew. We shared a gift, her and I. The more I understand myself, the more convinced I am that she knew. She looked at me with pity those last few days , like a quiet apology. Maybe a touch of regret for not telling me she knew. When we put her in the ground, the feeling I had carried since I was a child went with her. It was replaced by a new one. A sense of loneliness that couldn’t be cured. A feeling of being unanchored and, most importantly, of being awake without my mother.

And that feeling sits with me in every room I step into. And when I lie down to sleep, it wraps around me like a wet blanket. So to the girl who got swallowed whole by it, I get it. I wish I didn’t, but I get it. And to the ones still trying to survive it, it’s like swimming in the ocean. Sometimes you get tired and your limbs get heavy, but whatever you do, keep your eyes on the shore

Yours V.