Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
I’m a bit too young for a mid life crisis
Far too old for a quarter one
I don’t think, though,
that you can line up the years of your life
Fold it in half
Proclaim that point the middle
Not when our experience of time
Is relative
Relational
Not when time has a gravity
Not when time speeds up with every second
Not when the last years of isolation
Feel so short in hindsight
At the time, it was endless
Long days of tense nothing
Longing
Pacing
Prowling the same paths
Certain that this was historical
This would be a question on a test
100 years from now
What virus caused the world to stand still?
To stop
This was meaningful nothingness
This was an Age
An era
But looking back?
A blip
Like it was only yesterday
I was at my desk
At my office
Surrounded by people
Unmasked
Eating candy from shared bowls
Reading about a virus
A whole world away
Like it was just last week
That we laid Laura to rest
An outdoor ceremony
Surreal in the way of all funerals
Made more so
By the forced distance between us
By the matching masks stifling our sobs
A field of perfectly spaced scarecrows
Without even the ability
To wear a face of tear tracks
Like a badge of honour
Or respect
Like only a month ago
I hugged my niece goodbye at the airport
Where I said farewell to a little girl
When next month I will greet a young woman
Who, when I wasn’t looking,
When I wasn’t allowed to look
Lost the last vestiges
Of soft and round and sweet
They’re still there, as glimpses
But not innate
Not anymore
The memory of the airport
Feels like mere months ago to me
But for long years of her young life
I was simply a face on a screen
The time that was stolen from us
Is not equivalent
Maybe right now is my midlife
My halfway
Maybe I’m past it already.
Won’t know till I know
But when will I reach
The middle of my story?
Where will this chapter fall
In the book of my life?
Like gravity on a falling object,
Does time have a terminal velocity
Will it ever slow
Or will each day each year each minute
Collapse on top the other
Spinning faster and faster
Until my life passes in a blink
And it’s over and done and lost and won
And I never even found the time
To have that midlife crisis
Kelly Mary McAllister (she/her) lives in a concrete shoebox in the Toronto sky with a scruffy little black dog, often found furiously scribbling poems for her soul, stories for her nieces, and far too many emails. Kelly is a fat, queer woman with her fair share of mental health disorders, so she has a lot to write about.
