It means nothing to me; I have done no wrong, committed no offence. Only in the eyes of my peers have I committed an atrocity to rival the worst violations of the Geneva Convention. But I didn’t know. I simply had no clue, not a notion of what I was condemning myself to.
I am however not sorry. There are no apologies for this. For a man who commits no wrong should not have to apologise.
I genuinely don’t care that it was the last biscuit.
Slammed Receiver
ANNA MULLIGAN
I really did love you, you know.
Like sunlight on water.
Like a shoelace
Caught
In escalator blades.
Like I was going to stay
For the rest of my life.
I knew your voice
Better than mine –
But it’s time.
Stop calling.
Fading Spirit
SAMUEL H. DOYLE
It was hard to return.
You wouldn’t believe so but ...
I had memories of this place happy memories,
But I don’t recognise it, they have to be mistaken.
No, maybe it’s just different ... older ... weaker.
‘Take care, dem rocks are fierce shlipp’ry.’ I’m reminded,
I’m nearly as feeble as this place ... my place once.
It’s too quiet, unnatural in the countryside ... eerie.
I comment, get hushed,
‘Ach sure, dey left wen dee city yolks went a quarr’in.’
Yes ... yes, they must be right, scared away all the life.
Still I wish I could hear it again,
The sweet chirp and song of the birdies,
The distant howl of the hounds and hunt,
The faint rustling of the pheasants in McCullom’s meadow.
Ahh, that was being alive ... no more.
Oh God what ruin, a house they say ... my house,
No, this is no one’s home.
Yet, if I search deeply, imagine briefly, I see it there.
Those whitewashed walls, crumbling ... collapsing,
Keeling over like a stranded trawler on Nolan strand,
Once stood tall, no pride but height.
These walls were my support,
My lifetime cradle, strong as I became,
Supportive like the person I once was.
These small walls were my haven and shelter,
A simple sanctuary throughout all troubles.
But with time they fell.
The Second
(an excerpt from a novella)
ANNA MULLIGAN
YOU WILL NOT WANT TO go to the party where you meet her. You will fight it; you will text your friends and tell them you’re busy. You will set up a night for yourself; textbooks stacked up, reruns queued on your computer, three cans of Coke waiting at the edge of your desk to swoop in and tune you up. You will tell yourself that tonight is a perfectly fine night for staying in.
But you will look out the window when you ought to be drilling verbs and the indigo evening will seep in under the sill and the tree out front will whisper to you. You will feel the little tug in your stomach of missing memories being made, the ghost of regret future, and you will know that the textbook mountain will not be scaled this evening, because you will hear the pulse of the music. The vibrations will break into your home and make your body second-guess you, and you will know that you can’t stay in tonight.
You won’t want to go. You won’t want to get up from your chair, but the feel of it – of something happening, of being on the sidelines – will be too much for you, and you will go. You will straighten yourself out and refuse to change because it’s not like you’re staying long or anything and you will leave your things on the desk like you might get back to them – even if you know that tomorrow, when you see them there, you will feel like you let them fall to ruin, like you are at a museum and they are a statue missing half a face and a left arm – and you will go.
You will stand up and pause, listening to the revelry unravelling next door, considering and reconsidering, but in the end, you will go.
You will pad carefully down the stairs even though your parents are away for the weekend recuperating from something or other, and your sister is spending the night at her boyfriend’s and you’re covering for her because she said please and you’re practically Jesus – it won’t matter that the house is too empty to judge you. It will still feel illicit somehow, leaving your desk for the unknown. When you catch yourself sneaking, you will hesitate, torn between the comfort of your planned evening and the siren call of next door, but you will go, because you blow your friends off enough as it is and the verbs will wait and you want more than a queue of Cokes in single file and you keep missing things and you know your verbs just fine anyway.
You will shut the front door gently, looking away from the monstrous youth of next door to the rest of the street, sleeping almost-soundly in sepia streetlight, quaint as can be. It will remind you of playing chasing there, and some part of you will shrink back from the idea of turning from it to the house next door. You will almost turn back, almost leave this street to itself and go back to your books, but you’ll hear the undeniable rhythm of how young you are from behind you, and you will turn and go to the party.
It will be like every other house party. You will have your eyes open for your friends; you will know they’ll be pleased to see you and even more pleased to ply you with alcohol and loosen you up, but they will not appear. You will look around, realising that you have come just a little too late to properly partake, that you have come to it as a spectator now, always a little too sober to ever catch up to the vocational insanity of it all. You will feel the sinking swallow of regret as you pick up a plastic cup and pour yourself a small glass of something unpleasant. You will look around at the assembled revellers, sprawled in various states of intoxication and youth, engaged in all manner of activities that are entirely different kettles of fish when sober, and you will knock back your drink in one go, wishing you hadn’t come but not enough to leave.
You will wander through the sea of limbs, wondering often how so much can be squashed into a house not different from your own, and though you will see acquaintances – the host, the guy you sit behind in History, the barista from the coffee shop you go to during study breaks – you will not be able to make eye contact. You will remember why you don’t go to parties – why the siren call is just that, and why you ought to listen to your instincts. You will wonder if you will ever really feel like one of a group like this – if any amount of alcohol or free time or success or failure will ever make you feel like you belong in this picture.
You will whip yourself into a cantankerous frenzy and almost leave there and then. In fact, you will be turning to leave when you see her.
She will be in the emptiest room, almost alone. She will fit into the landscape like she was painted there; she will look like she belongs when she sips her cup, smoothly, like this is not her first time at the rodeo, and something in the stretch of her neck as she finishes the drink and the way it makes her straightened dark hair betray itself into waves will enchant you, and you will be caught.
You will freeze where you are for a second, two, lost in the hubbub of drunkenness and noise, eyes fixed on her. You will not be able to look away.
You will walk towards her. Your body will be suddenly unwieldy and clumsy; you will feel graceless, walking towards her, knowing that her shining dark eyes might at any moment be upon you. You will mess with your hair, adjust your clothes, curse your inadequate frame and build and body. You will want to leave, to leave this dreamlike avenue of action unsullied; but she will look across the room, tossing her hair gently to look out of the black mirror-like window, and you will be enthralled, and unable to do anything but move towards her.
You will think she doesn’t see you. It will seem impossible that someone like her could ever have their eyes caught on som
eone like you.
But she will speak to you.
‘Who are you?’ she will ask, softly, like you are alone together. Her voice will burn you to a crisp in the best way and you will take the last step towards her until your bodies are feet from each other.
You will know that it’s your name she wants, but it will feel like an invitation to turn your secrets out for her, and you will be willing, so willing.
‘Kit,’ you will say, and your throat will catch on it. You will be embarrassed, but not enough to move away.
She will smile like you have told her a secret. ‘Kit,’ she will repeat, and her voice will make it worth owning. ‘Are you from around here?’
The words will sound exotic and elegant in her voice. For a moment, you will forget where you live and what you have been doing with the last seventeen years of your life. You will blink once, twice, in the silence.
There will be noise all around you, general noise, movement and conversation and music, but you will not hear it.
‘Next door.’ Your voice will let you down; it will sound too much like falling short.
She will be leaning against a battered brown piano pushed up against the wall. You will be grateful for it, because it will stretch her pale form along its length and make it exquisitely harder to breathe.
She will notice you looking. She will look down at the piano, generously assuming you are examining the golden curls of decoration on the piano face and not the way her dark blue dress tightens at her waist and suggests hips and legs and other things hidden by the curtain of her dark shining hair. Your eyes will catch more than once on that hair; the occasional subtle wave, shining in the not-light, almost close enough to touch.
‘Do you play?’ she will ask, her head tilting charmingly. You will be charmed.
‘A little,’ you will lie. No matter that you will have a piano stool perpetually overflowing sheet music. No matter that your hands – good for so little, too thin for sports, too long for writing implements – will have worked for years to stretch so wide. You will not want to play for her; she will be too much, she will be more than you can imagine playing for, it would be a concert in Carnegie Hall, playing in front of this girl.
But her eyes will light up, and she will clasp her hands together in delight. ‘Play me something!’ she will demand, her smile warming you up like candlelight. ‘I can’t do anything like that. Show me! Play for me!’
You will shake your head. After all, she won’t know you at all. Poor playing is endearing when a close friend makes the mistake of showcasing it; strangers do not have such rapport. You won’t want to risk it.
But she will play dirty. She will look at you with sparkling eyes and move towards you and look into you and say ‘please?’ and you will fall to her because you will feel it already.
‘What do you want to hear?’ you will ask. You will be frantically running through your repertoire, trying to find the perfect fit for this girl. You will want very badly to impress her and have absolutely no idea how.
‘A song. Do you sing? You look like you sing. You should sing,’ she will say. How she guessed it, you won’t know. You have never really looked like a singer. You have quiet looks.
But you can sing – she will have seen it in your reaction; your body will have betrayed you, sided with her. It will not be the last time.
‘Sing for me!’ she will demand, delighted, and it will be hard to be nervous when her infectious smile is close enough to catch.
And you will fight it for a minute or two, shaking your head as she nods hers, but you will surrender to her, because there will be a light in her eyes you can’t bring yourself to deny.
You will purse your lips to keep from smiling and look down. ‘I’m no Mozart,’ you will mumble as she slides off the piano. Her arms will fold and her eyebrows will rise and you will be able to see her eyes truly for the first time – shadowed in dark powder, lined, but electric – and it will be enough to drive you to slide onto the stool and to push your fingers to lift the smooth dark cover and rest on the white keys.
You will take a breath, and her teeth will bite down on her lower lip, and you will start to play, singing the low melody under the piano, your fingers as nimble and smooth as ever.
None of it will be special. You won’t feel anything much, playing for her. Maybe a little squashed flame of a rush, a scrunched-up accordion of excitement, but it will be nothing compared to what you feel when you get to the part you know best and turn to look over your shoulder and see her dancing.
It will be shocking, somehow. You will be at a house party, after all; dancing is a given, along with drinking, general debauchery and someone vomiting somewhere they shouldn’t. Dancing shouldn’t be so surprising, but it will be. It will be like you have been given a window into something beyond incredible, watching her twist and turn to the music, swaying and setting her cup down on a side table so she can raise her hands to the ceiling. The way she moves will captivate you; how she is able to bring her whole self together to the music and how she can transcend the stepping over of rugs and the presence of side tables and the buzz of other music and other people to be this.
You will wonder if some day this moment will be nothing more than a rehashed summer memory; if the magic will lose its lustre with time. You will ask yourself if you could ever contain enough of her in any record you could keep to stop you forgetting why it can be a good idea to abandon verbs for parties.
Don’t worry. This is only the beginning.
With the Birds
CAELEN FELLER
Birds sit on the wire outside.
They can feel the cold.
It has been in the air for years.
Predatory by nature,
It bites them, takes those weakest.
The birds have no warm jumpers,
They have no mittens.
They’ve lost them, I’m sure.
I think how cold they must be.
I feel it – it chills me as I watch them.
They’re only birds.
Not real people, I know.
When a person is taken,
People care.
We watch them as they go.
A frozen bird is surrounded,
By other birds, those who care.
Watching, I am fascinated.
My mind wanders.
I’m with the birds.
My head is in clouds.
It begins to snow again,
The snow covers the bird in a shroud,
Buries it.
I mourn with the birds.
We Regret to Inform You, Madame
CONOR KELLEHER
Sit,
Ink,
Pen,
Fold,
Envelope,
Send.
Wait.
Receive,
Open,
Read,
Cry,
Crumple,
Toss,
Burn.
Home
GRACE COLLINS
MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, I’LL COME home. In a physical sense I’ve never left but really I’ve been gone for years. My body still walks around, smiling and making small talk when needed. But it’s hollow and empty; there is no passion in it. You see once upon a time, I heard of these wonderful things and I told myself stories of what would and what could happen if I was brave. I started to feel like I needed to chase these dreams, each sentence drawing me slightly closer to where I thought I should be. And I started to see the dangers of the world and the darkness along the path that laughed an evil laugh, but it intrigued me and I needed to know more. I thought that I could bring back the light that had been so kind to me. The light that had held my hand and made me smile. But in the dark I started to see things in people. It was as if their flaws had been painted onto their front. And it scared me; what if I became like them? But I wanted to know more about them, and how they let this happen, so I kept going.
I asked the dark about the light and
the smiles it brought and why people here are afraid of the darkness. And it drew me in, it kissed my lonely lips and filled me with fables and stories and told me what I could be and it made me its lover but all the while it was weighing me down, ready to throw me in for the vultures.
The light tried to warn me. But it all seemed so easy and simple and I thought I was in control. I thought that good things were soon to come. One day my foot got stuck in a root of an old tree. The tree laughed at me for falling and let its roots curl up around my leg, making its way to my torso until it consumed my whole body. Then it squeezed me tighter and tighter, crunching my bones and making my eyes go pop and it didn’t stop as I screamed and tried to escape its grasp. But when I stopped trying to break free, it passed me from root to branch until I was at its tallest limb. Here it let me swing like a pendulum, it let the fear of falling grow and grow and then it let that fear grow to hope. And when it knew that I was wishing and dreaming of falling it placed me down gently and let me be. It knew that this was a much worse fate than falling. I continued on my way, being drawn in with hope and idealistic little dreams of what could be.
The road has ended now. I ask my friend the darkness where it is, to help me, and it laughs. And it laughs and laughs and the trees join it and the shadows join them and soon everyone is laughing but me. And I don’t understand. And then I see that I have been fading; I’m not the person I started out as. I am the darkness and I am the badness. I am the coldness and I am the fear. I have become all that I was afraid of and that does not make me brave or strong. It makes me weak and fragile. I can see that I could not bring back the light, I’ve been made feeble by the dark. And I can see now that nothing was real. And what now? Nothing. I am nothing and I shall never return. Maybe I don’t want to and maybe I don’t deserve to.
Words to Tie to Bricks Page 3
