halls

i have been hung up like something that belongs on a wall // like something that requires a nail // a hammer the particular violence of being placed there is a hall i keep walking it goes on the way certain griefs go on not loudly only forward just more of the same pale light falling on the same pale frames and i am one of them i have accepted this in the way you accept a low ceiling you stop noticing it until you try to stand up straight the thing about being hung up is the stillness everyone walks past tilts their head moves on and you are still there exactly where they left you in exactly the position someone else decided i should say here that i let them i held the nail i handed it over said // here put me somewhere i cannot reach myself down from the hall keeps going i have walked it in both directions it does not end it does not narrow it grows more frames more faces more of whatever it is we hang on walls when we want something to mean something i mean something to no one specific i mean something in general royalty free from a distance but stand close enough and it is just dots i have stood very close to myself it is not recommended what i did not say before is that i kept going back to the one who hung me there kept walking the hall stopping at the frame adjusting the angle as though the problem was the angle the problem was not the angle the problem was that i believed a wall was the same as a home that being chosen for display was the same as being kept and the hall goes on as i said as i will keep saying because the hall going on is the whole thing the whole condition there is no door i have checked or there is a door and i am hung beside it watching it open and close watching people leave and not wondering if the light in here is the same as the light out there it is not i knew when they first lifted me the way you know a thing before you know it the hands were careful the kind of careful that is also a form of distance i mistook the care for wanting i do that i have always done that turned the gentleness of removal into the tenderness of arrival here is the confession i have been walking this hall looking for myself in every frame thinking // that one no // that one as though the hung version of me would recognize me as though he would know the way back he does not he is hung up too we are both just hanging here in this hall that has no end that has no door i can open waiting for someone to walk past slowly enough to actually look and i think they will and i think they wont and i think this is the thing about walls they do not care which one it is the frames go on the light goes on falling on all of us equally beautifully going nowhere

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Written by

jack-jenkins

30 / M

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