The Boy Who Could Never Keep Still

There once was a boy who could never keep still.
He kept his mother awake at night, tossing and turning in
her womb. She thought he would be a
footballer because he kicked so much.
Sometimes, she thought he'd somehow
miscarry himself;
pregnancy defeats rationality, it seems.
He was a fidgeter. A twister, a turner,
a Blutac-flicker,
a scab-picker,
a can-kicker,
a pen clicker.
A runner, though never in a
straight line.
Assembly was difficult,
Church a nightmare.
In class he drummed the desks,
made aeroplanes,
rocked his chair so far back he
fell.
Get out of my classroom,
Go to the headmaster's office,
I'm calling your mother.
Stop fidgeting.
Stop fidgeting.
Stopfidgetingstopfidgetingstopfidgetingstopfidgetingstopfidgetingstopfidgeting.
Stop it.

He tried to keep still.
He tried.
He did.
He sat on his hands,
but they went all
pins-and-needley.
His mother bought him a stressball
but he picked all the foam into cavities and
threw it at the back of the teacher's head.
Go to the headmaster's office.
I said, get out.
Now.
Now!

He tossed and turned in his
sleep like he had in the
womb.
He couldn't keep still, even asleep, even
then.
He began to feel very lonely, a lonely soul inside a
body that would forever move against his will,
against his best intentions.
When he concentrated his hardest, his
very hardest, when he stayed motionless for as long as
possible, he could still see the rise and
fall of his chest and when he held his breath,
he could still feel his heart
beat
beat
beat,
moving inside him, always,
always moving.
Sometimes, he thought that the
only way to stop moving would be if he were
dead and
that made him
sad.

So he began to stare at objects,
classroom chairs and blackboards and
parked cars and rocks and just
long to be as still as they were.
So calm, so motionless.
So still.
He ran his fingers over fences and
park benches, yearning for their peaceful
stillness.
He wanted for himself the
unconscious sleep they
enjoyed so quietly.

Years later, long after he'd learnt to
keep still,he learnt, too,
that every object was made up of
tiny molecules which
whizzed around in even the
stillest bottle of water,
that trembled fiercely in even the
most unmoveable boulders,
and that within every atom,
electrons span like
children round a maypole or
on a merry-go-round or
like a boy who could never keep still running
laps of his house in the middle of the
night.

And besides,
The whole wide world was
spinning, too,
like a top whipped up to
it's zenith,
like a centrifuge,
one hundred times faster than a speeding car,
and we're all spinning with it,
spinning through time and
space,
spinning, always
spinning.
We never stop.
We never stop moving.
We can never keep still.
And You,
And Me,
All of us;
We are all that Boy Who Could Never Keep Still.