I’ve been thinking about nothing a lot lately, the
Nothing that slips out of weathered lips, when a child asks What is it?
What’s going on? What are you thinking of, staring out a bleak,
rain-pattered window?
It’s nothing, of course.
I think of your face when realizing the exciting bend where Hope and Butler merge, suburban roads you’ve driven down hundreds of times finally converging into something your mind meets; I realize, though, this new conjoining road takes Hope’s name and grounds everything else into something best observed in hindsight, bleached memory of the would-be, had been, eternity of nothings dissolved into a crumb-trail of cheap gas, shaky hands over the wheel.
Time is elastic, and so I will force it over my index and thumb, sling it through fighting hair, and when it falls out, I will wear it on my wrist, in true girlhood fashion, waiting for someone to need it. Time is stretched thin, woven from grass and hair and fractured hems, and takes me back to the car—under the wheels, through the cracked windshield, into the FM stereo. It takes me to the ever-playing pianists at the airport, mix of bodies and lengthy, tempered fingers; I can be the soloist, the girl embarking on her first solo flight, the jet fuel, the fluorescent light over the 24-hour Dunkin.
Nothing is about all the things I hope to do when I grow into a real person. Run a marathon, jump into turbulent bodies of water, never mind that it’s 20 degrees and hailing, cry at more art, and develop a signature haircut. The marathon, I’m most sure about. After college, after the gap year before grad school, or the throwaway year I spend trotting the globe, chasing words and feelings that don’t translate—sodade (1), toska (2), forelsket (3)—which I’ve prematurely learned are always related to longing, nostalgia, hesitative ache; already carrying the shame knowing these things are foreign and possibly benign. I will have a list of things to keep my mind occupied while running. The breakout miles spent looking for ladybugs, remembering why they’re so special. The following occupied by fine motor skills, finger taps, fist clenches, said to keep Alzheimer’s at bay. A few trying to see how long I can run with my eyes closed—an old trick I learned walking on Hope.
Nothing, on the other side of the road.
(1) From Cape Verdean Creole, referring to an emotional state of nostalgic longing for something or someone that is absent.
(2) Russian, describing spiritual anguish derived from no specific cause.
(3) Norwegian/Danish, embodying the euphoric feeling of falling in love.
About the Poem:
In my senior year and likely final year in Providence, I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to soak in the details of this city—its roads especially. How many more times I’ll drive down them. Who to drive down them with. Which potholes to avoid. Time, fraught and sweet, weighs heavy on my mind, and no longer feels like a long, winding road to conquer. I wrote this as a reminder that a piece of me will always be in Providence and a piece of it in me.
About the Poet:
Julia Yakirevich is a high school senior and the 2025 Deputy Youth Poetry Ambassador of Rhode Island. She is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Wheeler’s Aerie Literary Voices and author of Magnum Opus and other stuff… (Aerie Literary Press, 2025).
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