Related

We are four. We are not related by blood, we don’t come from the same side of the world and we don’t even share one skin colour among the four of us. We come in different shades, different fonts, different pitches of our voices. Our hair is different and what comes out of our hands is different too. Our smiles are the same though. They are all covering half of our faces, sometimes bold and most times shy. Our thoughts overlap each other, intertwine and sometimes walk side by side, giving space to one another. Our minds are full, but our souls are fuller. They hold everyone that’s ever made a stop, that had a look inside. We hold each other and, when spread thin, we hold on to one another more anxious than ever. But we don’t let the others see. We protect each other from our own mess. Or so we think. We sit all by ourselves in the clutter of our minds, the wreckage of our souls, and emerge only when we think the dust has settled. But the dust never settles, it floats around, it gets in the cracks of our skin, under our nails, and sits on the crown of our head. And then we meet, the four of us. 

We take a trip together, somewhere by the water. We rent a house to spend the night and stop on the way to get food. We know already who is going to cook, who will do the dishes, who is going to play music that fits with our mood and who is going to disinfect the door knobs, the light switches, the toilet and anything that our bare skin might touch. We laugh. We know some things are not necessary, but they can’t be helped. We arrive and the first thing we do is pick the rooms. We’ll share, so the bad sleepers go together, those who can sleep through just about anything take the room close to the kitchen. None of us wakes up early, but the first who does makes coffee. The others follow one by one, sleep still in the corner of their eyes, the clothes wrinkled from the tossing and turning. One opens the fridge, takes out yogurt and fruits, the other warms up the oven for croissants, one sets the table while the last of us puts together a playlist to ease us into the day. We sit, a round table is circling between us. We eat, at first in silence, and then, when our words find they have a voice, in the noise of flowing words. One says she never eats breakfast alone, another says she can’t start her day without, one laughs and says she’s always on the run, while the other keeps her mouth full. We all turn and then we laugh. 

We make a plan for the day, we’re going to swim and read by the water. One will paint, another might write. One will just watch the trees, the birds and the sky, the other might sing. We all dance. We talk with words and we talk with a hurried kiss on the cheek before jumping in the water, holding hands. We look into each other’s eyes and we see deep within each other’s souls. And when we tire, we just lie down on the blankets the most prepared of us packed. We use each other’s legs for pillows and one dozes off while another is telling a story. When the day is packing her bags, we pack ours too and head to the house. We shower in turns and while one is washing, another is chopping veggies, boiling rice, squeezing lemons. We eat outside and then two share a spliff, while another is smoking pure tobacco. When the night is turning cold, we turn to go inside. One makes tea, two share a beer. We all sit on the floor and one says how this makes us free of furniture. We laugh. We are free, not just of furniture, but of everything that ever trapped us. One is braiding my hair and then I do her nails. We know it’s our last night together, and we want to stretch it, to push the morning away. But it comes anyway. The morning always comes and we have to go.

We pack, none of us as neatly as when we came, and our bags seem bloated. We laugh when we see them all together, like pregnant people ready to pop. We squeeze the bags together in the trunk and our bodies in the car. There’s silence. One drives, one sleeps in the back, one is checking her email and another is trying to find the songs that make this feeling last. We know it was a small world we created for the weekend but, in all its smallness, we know how big we felt in it. One by one we’re dropped home and we go back to the madhouse we left. We are four. We are not related by blood, but we are, in a big world that tries to separate us, related by all that’s shaped us, by all we shared.