They always say these things can come back, of course. That it is not buried, just cast out like a shadow. Trailing you and yours. And like a shadow, on those days of high sun, you can forget it is there, can think, perhaps, it is buried. You should know better, of course. You read the news, you have seen the famous actor, recently deceased, and heard people say: how could it not be enough? The family, the money, the fame? How was it not enough?

You would say to them: it is not a matter of weight. In life, and especially in this, it is almost never a matter of weight. When a storm - a real storm - comes, even the deepest foundation will not save you.

~

The children go door to door in their new clothes - what you would call their Sunday best - wishing you a happy bayram. In this neighborhood, though, most of them are too poor for new clothes. They go anyway, in the best they can muster, ragged, garish suits and dresses, their faces scrubbed raw by the hands of parents and grandparents.

You are, for the time, just as poor. Living off potatoes and rice and onions, glasses of tea, and the generosity of friends. It will pass. You are living like them for a month, but then there will be a surplus, relatively speaking. But this lack hangs over you like a shadow, or perhaps like a hole looming on the road ahead. It is in the back of your mind. It is never far away. There are weeks your life seems pulled towards it.

They expect money, but you do not have enough for that. You do not have enough for anything, really - a beer, a meal out, 100 grams of coffee, a phone call home when you are needed most. You have bought candy for them, instead, and even that is an expenditure you can barely manage. And as they come and knock on the door, you smile and tell them how lovely their clothes are - this shadow will always be with them, you think - and you hand them pieces of candy. At first they’re disappointed, but then they smile. It is just another kind of abundance on this - for them - rare day of surplus.

It is not easy for you. In them, you see your nephew. Your legs are suddenly weak and the strength will not come back. Your hands shake. You are far away. Too poor to call or to return; too selfish, so you are here, trying to assuage that selfishness the best, only way you can - with the rituals of another culture. And you are even failing at that.

~

It is strange how easily things can be changed. By little more than words, usually. Words can make memories intolerable. They can push you out into the world. They can make your legs shake, your hands faulty. They can turn a city you love, a day of sunshine and children laughing, into a kind of prison.

Of course, they are not just words. They are us grappling with the shadows. Of desire and fear. Of longing and regret. They are what we all feel and yet cannot share. Or, they are what we all share and cannot feel.

These things can come back, which we all should know, since everything can rise up when you think it has been buried. Memory, love, the failure of love. We are trailed, dogged, haunted by shadows. Sometimes, when the sun is bright, we think we have escaped them. Until we are buried by them.