This Is Happiness

by Niall Williams

I sometimes think the worst thing a young person can feel is when you can find no answer to the question of what you are supposed to do with this life you’ve been given. At moments you’re aware of it balanced on your tongue, but not what comes next. Something like that. I can now say that another version of that happens in old age, when it occurs to you that since you’ve lived this long you must have learned something, so you open your eyes before dawn and think: What is it that I’ve learned, what is it I want to say?

The truth turns into a story when it grows old. We all become stories in the end.

eggs – lemon placemats, napkins the colour

She knew who was in which grave, and who in the one below that one (and the ones below those too, who were working their way back to the surface through the self-raising agent of a colloquy of worms fat and contented from passing through life, until chosen by Simon of the Kellys as best bait for the smirking salmon passing in the river).

I pardon my ignorance by the fact that no one then spoke of their ailments, there was a now depreciated philosophy of offering it up and half the people of Faha were dead before they thought to complain of a pain.