By Rogan Kelly
I’m watching this TV series Duty / Shame (Giri / Haji) & no one texts here. Everyone calls, twice, three times, in fact. No chill till someone picks up & generally someone does, eventually. It all feels foreign to me. Our protagonists open on a roof, everyone pointing & being held at gunpoint. But really it’s a master class in communication, feeling seen. Half the roof is speaking in Japanese. The other half is asking for English translation. The Japanese man, Kenzo, fluent in both, obliges. Kenzo’s daughter, Taki, translates her father’s English words back into Japanese. Everyone is there to either save or kill Taki. She is there in the larger sense to measure her father’s love. Except just now she decides it’s too late & threatens to jump off the roof which is a bit of a fuck you / shi nee to all the guns & plot. A reminder that weapons turn absurd in the face of heights. We all just want to be seen or disappear depending on the moment or the day. We feel / cause so much pain in the back & forth.
I’m pretty sure I’m in what they call a mixed state experiencing depression & mania together. I have the volume on the TV at concert level & I’m crying. Last week, I stopped answering the landline because like the mail & the evening news, it’s never good. & a couple days ago, I deactivated my socials which should be a quiet happening but I’m feeling ecstatic & would share if I wasn’t alone & offline. Couple that with not opening my cell to text or call for a few days has alerted everyone in my life but me. It takes me a second to realize the loud rapping on the door is not coming from the television. I open to a rooftop. The policeman says he’s here to do a wellness check. His taut hand near his holster says otherwise. My therapist & group sponsor, dressed festively, standing behind him, look as if they want to save / kill me.
Rogan Kelly is the author of the chapbook Demolition in the Tropics (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019). His work has appeared in Diode, New Orleans Review, The Penn Review, Plume, RHINO, and elsewhere. He is the editor of The Night Heron Barks and Ran Off With the Star Bassoon.
losing our grip on purpose 