2 months later

random writing in my journal

At the bus stop I try to read William Carlos Williams. Instead, I find myself reading about his life—wondering what drove him to write.

A man sits opposite me, chain-smoking cigarettes, their stench so heavy I imagine it has seeped into every piece of clothing he owns, every belonging waiting for him at home.

He speaks Irish on the phone to Máirtín, repeating his name until it sounds almost like an affirmation.

I convince myself there's alcohol about him, though I never quite catch the scent.

He carries his belongings in an old kindling bag, frayed at the edges with a plasticky fringe. He's dirty, unhurried, and gets on a different bus before mine arrives.

I close the book after a page or two. I watch as his bus drives away, and I'm left wondering why I couldn't, for the life of me, concentrate on my book; why instead I had pieced together an entire life from tobacco smoke and a carrier bag.

//

It's the air here. Mark remarks on it every time he visits, especially when we walk down to the water. How clean it is. Fresh. How quickly people reach for another adjective.

It does something to me too. It fills me with an uncertain empathy for the familiar faces at the bus stop, for the corner-shop bread buyers. Each smear of dirt on a sleeve feels inherited, as though the land itself had been passed from father to father. Every hand has steadied a stone in those walls.

Then I remember election maps. I catch myself side-eyeing neighbours in the weeks that follow, trying to reconcile their kindness with the possibility that some might distrust anyone who doesn't look or sound like us.

Growing older here has taught me that prejudice is rarely loud. More often it lives quietly, behind ordinary greetings. More unsettling still is recognising that I am not immune to it either; that I, too, can let suspicion bloom inside me, allowing imagined beliefs to dissolve the kindness of complete strangers.

I keep breathing the air. I remind myself that wherever hurt gathers, so do the people trying to lessen it. 

the 29th

Tears fell onto my hand
as it wrapped around her neck,
pooling warmly against my skin.

She wore the striped bottoms
that used to be mine-
the ones she liked so much 

I never asked for them back. 

Sat upstairs, a single lamp
lit the middle of the room,
leaving the corners to themselves.
Low music thrummed softly,
a second stillness beneath our own.

I breathed in her familiar scent
as she read aloud some of his words,
stopping halfway through a sentence
to let the meaning unfurl between us.

Then we sat in silence,
wondering.

I opened and closed my eyes,
willing tiredness,
sinking further into her
and the cushions.

That's nice-
Your eyelashes tickling my cheek.

So I did it again.

I would do it
a thousand more times.

Avoiding eye-contact. Visibly distressed.

I nibble as politely as possible at my nails,
not stopping until I reach the raw patch beneath them,
trying to look anywhere but at the person sitting opposite.
The uneven lines, the strip of torn skin, the faded blue nail polish from months ago
still caught in the corners.

My file sits on the table, years of three-month intervals
bound in dulled red, its tabs jutting out at odd angles.
I’ve peeked before, lifting the corner and tilting my head sideways,
reading about myself in secret, in ten-second bursts.