Baldwin in December

James Baldwin died on December the first.
And the date, it doesn't signify anything. It would make no difference if he died in June. He would be as dead and I would be as blue.

Except I read my first Baldwin on a December Sunday morning. The university bus I was on kept making stops to pick up already impatient students who didn't look like kids; they looked like they were on the way to their tedious jobs. The cold was unfathomable. The all-around fog fumed in watchful drowse and the bus couldn't speed up.

Go Tell It To The Mountain, Baldwin said.
By the time the bus reached university, I was dangerously out of my body.
The classes felt lonelier than ever with pupils who were dangerously adult with their adult talks. You know the kind where they say a lot but nothing sticks. In the chaos teachers came and went, all-around conversations flew like TV ads, and like a lump, I felt the cry.
So, I bundled up my cry and saved it for later.

Two days after that, I cried sitting on the bathroom floor.
Baldwin was sitting right beside, smoking, killing time, thinking of love and loneliness, friendships and misfortunes. Of Martin and Malcolm.

So December… it brings back all that. And I start to think about the transcendent, terrifying choicelessness of love.

As December slowly grows into a black rose that somebody will throw at my lovely little grave someday, I start to think about how he said that people don't have any mercy. That it is in the name of love that they tear you to pieces. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character.

"They weep big, bitter tears–not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy", while we sat side by side on the white tiles, Baldwin ended with that and fleeting laughter, with a puff of smoke that lasted longer. 

And I smile.
I pick up where I left off, I pick up Baldwin in December.

Sumaya Mashrufa is a Sub editor at The Daily Star.