Kala

by Colin Walsh

Kinlough’s too small a place to carry so much haunting.

Mam was talking, but you were thinking about how suburbs are perfect cradles for dreaming: they practically beg you to imagine another life, one lived at a burning voltage.

The things that make life comfortable are always unacceptable, if you look at them square on. Someone, somewhere, is always suffering so you can be happy.

But even if you’re putting all your energy into saying no to life, making sure nothing new ever happens, holding the world at bay, it doesn’t matter. Cos, basically, life doesn’t give a fuck. The rivers flow on regardless, inside you, and outside you, and…em…I don’t fucking know, I sound like a pure stoner.

You know what’s appealing about floaty hippie ideas like that? They let you pretend the world isn’t made by decisions and consequences. No one’s responsible for anything, we all just float along. Load of fucking bollocks.