Now Is Not the Time to Panic

by Kevin Wilson

I knew that it didn’t really mean anything. But I wanted it to be there forever, so that when I was older, when I’d become the person I was going to be, I could come back and it would still be there. So that Zeke, if he ever went back to Memphis, and then went to some university in the Northeast, and then got married and had kids and started to forget about this summer, could come back to this house and it would all be here, and he would remember. And maybe, if we came back at the same time, all those years later, we’d remember each other.

I thought that the saddest thing that could happen was that something inside your head worked so hard to make it into the world and then nothing happened. It just disappeared. Now that I’d put those words into the open air, I needed them to multiply, to reproduce, to cover the world.

It was strange, how his absence meant that I had to work hard to keep him out of my mind or else he took up too much space.

But I also think it’s not so bad if you never quite feel right in this world. It’s still worth hanging around. You just have to look harder to find the things you love.”