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.