Dr Esmorie Miller is a lecturer in criminology in the Lancaster University School of Social Sciences. Appointed in 2022, she previously completed her PhD and taught at Queen’s University Belfast, before lecturing for four years at London South Bank University. She is a historical criminologist whose research in youth, race, gender, and justice explores experiences of everyday criminalization. Creative methods help shape her research innovation.

Paradox of Time

A Man died, suddenly. It was to the dismay of most. It was December, that time of year when my fickle heart demands of me, ‘do I still need to dance?’

But I was not listening to my heart. I was deflecting instead, resisting the news in long sips of char black coffee, taking in the people carrying on with their lives, scurrying along the streets below. I was waiting to feel.

The man was returned here to rest, one month to the day. Repatriation, some call it. Coming home, others call it. We laid him, there, to the rest he spent his life in search of. But we are not allowed to celebrate. He left instructions. No play. No dance. It was not the mood he cultivated. It was not the mood he allowed to flourish amid the tomato bushes that produced in abundance and the snow peas, delicious even when eaten raw. He grew these each summer in his calculated backyard slice of life, looking them over each day after work. Perhaps praying to the Gods of productivity. Perhaps admiring his sleight of hand, green thumbs in a frosty land. He raced to capture photosynthesis. He raced to beat the hardening of the earth by frost. Dance and play were not the mood which fertilized the giant hedge he tenderly manicured. Which many admired. Which wrung around his life. Which kept him hidden. Like only a tall wall could. A prisoner of his singular sense of longing. On that day we farmed him out once more, and to the earth he returned.

I blame this heart of mine, for this, for everything. This thumping, fickle old instrument, this ticking clock, my literal soul, the window to my good life. What peace is mine, without it? What peace is mine, without my soul? I blame you now, for all I have been. Continues this heart of mine, to me, ‘Of course I will beat, according to your needs, but only if I am given the power to decide, as to what and how a heart derides. First refusal is what I seek. For I am your keeper too. All your choices come back to me, as my desires come back to you.’

And so my fickle heart demands of me, ‘do I still need to dance?’

But I am still not listening to my heart. I am still waiting to feel. The man who died, he was my father. But I am not his son, that is my brother. I, we, you have been here so many times before, in life’s aftermath. Here we are, with the many in dismay, to escort him to the upside down. We are not so sad, my brother and me, we two who witnessed the roots he cultivated with the shadow underside. Feeling the ebb and flow of this clock with its ticking that still echoes his fears. It ticks along with us now as we become the measure of years, measured in the greying strands, decorating what’s left of ragged bodies. One two, buckle thy shoe, three four, shut the door, five six, pick up sticks, seven eight, set ‘em straight, nine ten, nine ten, nine ten, nine ten. The children he left behind, the children matured before their time. A community caught up now in unshakable torment. At last, feeling. Loss. Lost. In this paradox of time.

After Rain on Sunday Evening

After rain, mosquitos biting, no less fiercely than the hordes of those giant, red ants which came that one year

(Gi)\normous\ the technical term\ slipping off your child-like, mango flavoured tongue

I think it was?

Sunday evening. I think it was?

An unremarkable year, in the big history of the earth

Not like the Challenging records of risking outer space, or the futile cumulative attempts of re-entry only Columbia can never tell

Unless it was the year marking your first big move away, from home

Boarding away from mother’s breast

Letters from home, filling you in, as you fill out, about what you are missing, your absence and the mangoes going bad on the ground, going bad with you gone

Your first period, in first form, and the first boy in Spanish class, mouthing ‘te quiero’, but who still does not know your name

He calls you, bright girl

You can tell he is already like a father-type, a boy mimicking manhood, and the girls, your classmates, smiling his name, spurring on his already infamy

‘Bright girl’, he is still commenting on your grade, months later, the only way he seems to know to talk to you

But your gut screams with longing, and monthlies, and you see already only his faults, his father’s son, his hitched-up trousers, his smug troll-like menace, his over-performance

He smiles, teeth bared, nostrils flared, your heart hurts, it is not the kind of recognition you imagined would come with love, smarty pants, you are a smarty pants

Then there are the others who failed, and the teacher who called out all 25 names with corresponding grades

And later, in detention when one failing sister finally stops talking long enough to pull on her ear, pick her nose, stick her thumb in her mouth, before resting her head on her desk, leaving you to think silly rabbit both with and without rancour

You think of mosquitos, in that moment, you think of (Gi)/normous red ants, lightning storms after rain, red clayed muddied shoes, candlelight over electricity\ indoor vs outdoor\ and the novel you finally read in full\ The Mosquito Coast

After rain, mosquitos, red ants, mango season, life finding a way

He Knows, He Knows me Not

‘He knows me,’ if ever there was a sentiment cast in the awe of undeniable cruelty.

‘He knows me,’ again, and ego yokes with confidence like certainty.

I look on, in wonder. I Am not mad; am I just disappointed, then? Rendering my mother’s words, even now, a mighty omen. And these must be my Crocodile tears.

I do recall those first few cracks along the spiral of revelation, jarring disruptions, crude warnings zigzagging their error signal, picking at the heart that knew too well to tumble low, wanting to lay down, wanting the nerve to wander far.

Looking at him, it is hard to say if self-realization will set in, this time. Hope and wonder lingering long, denial like defiance like triumph.

It is Sunday afternoon, after all. In this hour, in all these moments, couples somewhere are making love, fighting their horrors with passion and tremulous fury.

It is Sunday afternoon, after all, where recent hours were spent over fine food, fine wine, in a finely repurposed establishment. A space redone to recapture something about to otherwise slip into a past suddenly in demand. Wooing a future whose fragility agitates decay.

And here we are in another season of undoing. Another one. The third this week, this month, this year. Undone. Redone.

Here we are, and even holding hands, heading to a field where musicians conjure eager crowds honoring the season of 11pm northern sunsets. Feeling the pall of soapy summer wind washing like wildfires over us, longing like hope like confidence.

It is the season of outdoor nightly jazz performances.

It is the season of anticipating crowds.

It is the season of rabid, Southern Ontario black flies.

They ride the putrefying waves of seasonal expectations, appetites wide open.

The shrug he performs is extravagant, cruel, even with my hope.

Can a grimace be sardonic? His sideways titled head, that gaze, that final commitment to unconcern.

And he does let go of my hand.

Let go of my intrepid heart, which I too allow to shatter again and again, all one million splinters embedding themselves into my practiced world weariness. No commitment to pain, just inertia like chance like expectation.

Why do people seek validation?

But can there be intimacy without it?

I asked of him, ‘He knows what?

He responds, ‘You know. He knows me. He knows the kind of choices I would make. He doesn’t need to ask about the “what you will do thing”.’

A Place Like Sundays

He seemed like an old man to me, even then

You know the way it can be, through the lens of youthful thinking; old, because he knew my grandpa; old, because, even then, my grandpa had been long dead

He was tethered to that past, though one beyond my understanding; but here is what I know about his time—it was the beginning of a promise of progress, of partnership; a history where women and men with skin the colour of burnished mahogany sat with their family and friends, free to roam from veranda to yard and back again, not as property owned, but on property they owned; it was a promise to helm the ages and wages of so-called sinners, to come

I watched him turn the same corner, a large brown and orange plaid printed thermos, firmly clutched, righted under a strong right arm

Off fishing, for the night, for family, for life, for tomorrow

I am thinking of him now, of this place and its broken promise, that clings to me, like a never-ending Sunday, the almost, wait between

Now, forty plus years on, of that corner; of bends in roads; of the predictably insipient sunlight marking childhood sunsets, a refrain for each dawn

Of the waters, which continue to carry us, sustaining, unawares, both benefits and burdens of hopes remaining in the eternal wake of missed opportunities

Of pristinely pleated school uniforms, ironed clear on Sundays, standing in that small veranda which sheltered us during that terrible hurricane, in 1988