![]() Devin Kelly is a high school teacher living in New York City. He is the author of *In This Quiet Church of Night, I Say Amen* (Civil Coping Mechanisms), and his work has been published in* Longreads, The Guardian, Lithub, Hobart, DIAGRAM*, and more. A SUN SETTING THROUGH A WINDOW or SEVEN LAYERS OF PAINT
after Matthew Yeager If you've said you were going to quit but didn’t. If sometimes even the largest room feels cramped. If you leave the ones you love to be with the ones you don’t. If you’ve built a house of fire. If you left the food in the microwave. If you forgot to fall asleep. If you woke to find a fly crawling the long crack between the wall & ceiling. If last year’s clothes no longer fit. If it’s not a question of size. If it’s always something else. If you’ve spent an hour looking for what was in your pocket. If you’ve collapsed out of sheer annoyance with the self. If you’ve wanted to scream but knew only the neighbors would hear. If you do not know their names. If you’ve cultivated a life of conscious avoidance. If you sometimes forget your mother’s middle name. If you do not always get the job done. If desire is your best kept secret. If it’s just one more cigarette out the window. If it’s just one more. If your friends are getting married. If sometimes you want to reject the invitation. If you think about joy the way a child thinks about algebra. If you’re just trying to figure it out. If it’s just another day. If you’re fine. If you don’t know what to order. If it’s another conversation. If you begin with I’m sorry, I forgot. If your friends say you worry too much. If you worry too much. If there’s gum all over the sidewalk. If the sign that reads caution, paint drying is five years old. If it seems everyone is throwing their furniture out in the rain. If you want to walk alone. If you don’t want to walk alone. If you want to say something about this life. If you don’t want to fight. If your pants are stained. If all your plants are dying. If you have no idea why. If you forgot to give them names. If there’s another life beyond this life. If there’s even tomorrow. If you hold your breath. If you’re holding it now. TONIGHT I AM THINKING OF EMIL ZATOPEK After the frost came, the cold stayed, & everything it touched began to hold a wind, like even the walls had holes. & on the subway this morning, two mice wrestling slid skidding on the ice between the tracks -- it looked like one of them might’ve been the other’s brother — & then the train came & they disappeared beneath it. Sometimes, in weather like this, I wonder what is going to become of us. It’s not the stuff of party-talk & banter. I can’t begin a conversation with the sound of my heart waking me up at night & how I stayed up in bed waiting for it to burst out of me. I get the feeling it happens to all of us but I wouldn’t say it. I’d say Hell I Didn’t Sleep Well Last Night & someone would nod, maybe, & say Me Neither & then the rest of the night would carry on. I think odd things when I’m alone. Tonight I’m watching videos of Emil Zatopek, who, after winning the gold in both the five and ten thousand, decided to run his first marathon at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. Ten miles in, he pulled beside the favorite, asked him what he thought of the race so far, & the favorite, thinking it would ruin Emil’s confidence, said the pace was too slow. It wasn’t. But Emil pulled away & the favorite collapsed to the ground & almost died. The favorite didn’t know then that, when it was too cold to run, Emil would draw the blinds of his apartment that looked out on streets emptied by occupation & fill his bathtub with water, soap, & dirty clothes, & run in place over them for hours until everything was clean. What we don’t know about us is what makes us. Because everything is approaching the infinite it is how we approach the infinite that changes our lives. I am thinking of what to do with the unsaid, of all the empty space caught between us that could be filled with me telling you I Love You, over & over again, each time for the first time. This is the story, though, of my life, the story I want to tell the next time I cannot sleep, how it has nothing to do with you, this heavy beating of my heart, but how I want you to know anyway, how the pace is not too slow, but too fast, & how maybe you feel like this also, just sometimes? The weather outside, cold. Your mind running for hours in the dark room of your body. Everything about the world both too much & too little, all at once.
1 Comment
John D
4/28/2021 11:37:57 am
Devin, I said YES to most of the "If-yous" here. It was liberating and made me feel hopeful. We're all slobs on this bus, yeh, yeh....
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