Halfway Out The Door by Nick Allison

ROMAN ODINTSOV

Halfway Out The Door

Maybe it isn’t beauty we’re after

but the noise behind it,

the small pulse waiting

in the breath between gestures.

If I peeled back the veil

and let you see the clutter,

would you still call it true,

or would the shine dull

like chrome left too long in the rain?

I’ve heard the same song for years

and only now understand

what it never tried to say.

Meaning arrives when it’s tired,

when the last chord fades

and you’re halfway out the door.

Maybe all art is that—

a late arrival,

a whisper from the wrong direction.

I still don’t know

what to make of paint

thrown at a wall,

except maybe the truth

was never in the pattern

but in the throw itself—

the brief weight of the hand

before it lets go.

© Nick Allison 

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Nick Allison

Nick Allison is a writer based in Austin, Texas. His poems and essays have appeared in HuffPost, The Shore, CounterPunch, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The Chaos Section, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere, as well as on his personal site, The Truth About Tigers. He recently edited the anthology Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age (TCS Press, 2025). Social: @nickallison80.bsky.social

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