Grief Is Another Word For Love
Illustration by Anne Le Guern. I am trapped in Australia. The borders are shut, which has worked well for keeping COVID-19 out, but it has also kept me in. Over the last fifteen months in sunny Perth, where I live, there have only been two cases of COVID-19 in the community. We have not worn masks, the hospitals have not been deluged, our schools have stayed open. We are in a gilded cage. A friend calls it Sun-tanamo. We both laugh when he says this, but we are not happy.
A year and a half into the pandemic, I am nostalgic for the geography of my familiar. I long for Johannesburg, the city of my heart. When I left South Africa, I expected to go back frequently. There was a daily direct flight, and my frequent visits to South Africa made living here bearable.
But I have not been home since 2019, and my children are beginning to forget how beloved they are across the ocean. I miss hearing women shout greetings across a busy street. I want to see plump brown girls in short dresses laughing in the winter sun as they walk alongside skinny boys in grey trousers and wayward ties.
In my neighborhood here, there are only pale-faced children holding hands with their thin mothers. Australia is so orderly, so quiet. No one calls out above the
