Marketplace

My son Baraka lives in Nairobi, where the jacaranda drops its violet litter onto the courtyards and nobody sweeps it right away, as if the color itself needs a moment before it becomes only mess. He makes things with his hands, casts in sand and metal, and for a long while he carried a restlessness he couldn't name, a tightness that showed in how he gripped everything he loved, afraid that loosening his hold would mean losing it.