Martyr!

by Kaveh Akbar

How can it get rid of the big ball of rot inside me? It feels like this giant sponge sucking away anything in the world that’s supposed to feel good.

Why would anyone choose feeling shitty when feeling good was an option?

“We have difficulty seeing our present selves in history the same way we view our past and future selves.

When you are ten, shame stitches itself into you like a monogram, broadcasting to the world what holds you, what rules your soul.

You can keep being the sad sober guy in Indiana who talks about being a writer, or you can go be one.”

Roya used to say I was a good listener. Mostly, though, I was just a bad talker.

Cyrus paused for a second. He felt a flash of familiar shame—his whole life had been a steady procession of him passionately loving what other people merely liked, and struggling, mostly failing, to translate to anyone else how and why everything mattered so much. He realized he was perhaps doing what Sad James had once called The Thing, the overliking thing, obsessing over something in a way that others felt to be smothering.

“Why are you worried about what people who hate you think about your art?” “Well, because the people who hate me also own all the guns and all the prisons.”

“I get that,” said Cyrus. “I do. Maybe part of it is just wanting my tiny little life to have something of scale. For the stakes to matter.” He paused, then added, “For my having-lived to matter.” Orkideh smiled, placed her hand on Cyrus’s. It felt cold, dry, like canvas. “We won’t grow old together, Cyrus. But can’t you feel this mattering? Right now?”

My life was a painting I’d been staring at upside-down up until that moment, that moment when Leila wandered in and flipped it right-side up for me. Just like that. Everything clicked into place, the picture came into clarity.

If a great winged angel had come up from the earth and burst apart, I would have gathered its feathers.

“Anger is a kind of fear. And fear saved you. When the world was all kneecaps and corners of coffee tables, fear kept you safe.”

Fear made me work hard, get better. It’s a dirty fuel, but it works.

She had really been in love with me once, and I had really loved watching her love me.

Love was a room that appeared when you stepped into it.