Interview by Isadore Diaz
What was the inspiration behind this piece?
I’d been dealing with an overwhelming feeling of getting left behind that’d been brewing up inside of me for several years. Before coming back to New York, I spent a lot of time traveling alone and I often found myself observing other people and the things they did. It felt strange to watch people effortlessly participate in their culture with their friends and family, to be a part of something, when I felt like I didn’t belong to anything. It was like being a ghost in a way, observing life while not actually participating in it. This poem sprung from those thoughts and feelings. I had a lot of doubt about my purpose and trajectory. I placed a lot of strenuous expectations on myself to try and “catch up,” and I nearly broke myself. This poem is about letting go and allowing myself to breathe. We’re all running our own race, and I’ll undertake it at my own speed. I’ve got nothing to prove to anybody, not even myself.
You use a lot of words that make the poem feel nostalgic or reminiscent of certain things you’ve seen in the past. Is there any specific reason you made this choice in your piece?
There was a carousel of images spinning through my head while I wrote this poem. I was thinking of the past, particularly when I was a kid. As humans we have a way of idealizing the past. But that’s just a filtered view. I was letting go of that stuff too.
This poem seems really personal. For example the line “please just stay a little longer, please don’t go away” seemed to have a specific feeling behind it. Were there any challenges you had when writing this piece? If you feel comfortable sharing what you were feeling when you were writing this?
That line refers to the muse, or the subconscious or God. It’s the voice in your head that writes the words for you. I didn’t exactly write the poem as much as I heard it in my mind while I was riding an electric scooter through Queens. When I got home, I sat down and wrote the poem exactly as I heard it. Then I revisited the poem over the course of the next 3 days making corrections until it was finished.
It was smooth process. Really the hardest part of writing it was living through everything that led up to the moment of writing it. I like to think of it as a storm of consciousness.
Which stanza was the hardest to write and why? What other challenges did you confront when writing this piece?
Writing the line that you asked me about, “please stay a little longer” was the hardest part to write. This poem exposes my most intimate thoughts and fears. Allowing myself to “disrobe” like this was crucial in the purpose of making art. But it’s not a comfortable feeling, although I’m pretty glad about the way the poem turned out and wouldn’t change it.
Read Rafael Cevallos’s “The Fast Lane” in the 2025 issue of The Lit.
Rafael Cevallos is a lover of adventure who’s dedicated significant amounts of time to exploring the Ecuadorian rainforest. After years of travel, his fascination with human movement and exercise as the ultimate form of preventative medicine lead him to LaGuardia Community College, where he majors in Physical Therapy. He currently works as a rehabilitative exercise specialist. His time on the road and now, as a student, have been part of a process of discovering his voice as a writer. He is working on a collection titled, “Love, Violence and Other Cosmic Vagaries.” Follow him on Instagram @r.i.cevallos
