Nnnnerves

We walked to the river along an old train line. Men were digging sand from the riverbed when we arrived, tipping it into wooden canoes moored to the shore. They dived beneath the water with a bucket and appeared again ten seconds later, heaving with the weight of wet sand above their heads. The midday sun was burning, but the men’s muscular bodies stayed cool in the water. An old tip-truck reversed into the river in a rocky, shallow section, and the men shovelled their canoe loads into the back. Truck drivers will sell the sand to construction companies that use it to make cement.

The railway line crosses the river on a rickety old bridge. Adrian was the first to jump. Fifteen metres, I reckon - high enough to count ‘one dinosaur two’ before hitting the deep brown water. I climbed out onto the frame of the bridge from the old railway sleepers, and looked down. Adrian stood by my side, wet and happy. My heart was thumping so hard my entire stomach and chest jumped with each beat. Adrian laughed. I jumped.

A week later I stood in a room with a phone in my hands, dialling the organisers of the Medellín International Poetry Festival. Underneath my shirt, my heart was on a bridge again. Thump, thump, thump.