At Swim, Two Boys

by Jamie O'Neill

Mr. Mack was overcome with pity, at a boy’s life stunted by the failings of a father.

“One does not wish oneself changed. One wishes the world changed to accommodate one.

“Believe that I exist,”

“Had she any sense. But one despairs of discovering sense in the young.

Yes, there was something altogether tantalizing about truth. One burnt to tell it, for it to be known. Dreaded it, too, that someone else should say it, their saying making it true, the truth true, unalterable.

Wilde: What one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry on the housetop.

“My grief on the sea, How the waves of it roll. For they heave between me And the love of my soul.”

“I’m just thinking that would be pleasant. To be reading, say, out of a book, and you to come up and touch me—my neck, say, or my knee—and I’d carry on reading, I might let a smile, no more, wouldn’t lose my place on the page. It would be pleasant to come to that. We’d come so close, do you see, that I wouldn’t be surprised out of myself every time you touched.”