Bereft of two brothers and one fiancé,
she passed their photos to me.
In a roija wine soliloquy,
their stories were transformed
to Northern liturgy: a Psalm for the Falls.
She told of the South alive
with honeycombed nettles
and white-haired old dandelions;
of her brother, not quite twenty-one or home,
a harp-imprinted passport in his rigamortis hand.
She spoke of his car
being found by a dog walker
on that cordite Connaught border,
traces of explosives; her childhood
set ablaze in the shattering after blast.
She talked of a sixteen year old brother,
defenceless, his arms pressed
to his stunned face as he stood, cornered,
counting the stones of Bennett's Corner Shop
as if it were the Milltown he’d reach all too soon.
Of the bullet that broke his skull.
Herself, a child still, desperate to comfort him,
praying, peeling off the glued bandage
to see only cloudy nerves of brain
She talked of being engaged:
the clear Andersonstown air,
Christmas, an estate, proud in painted murals,
how she glimpsed car light flash
a brief second until time fused like a trip wire.
And she was blind; could feel nothing but chunks
of imploded windscreen, shattered dashboard
and his December breath cold against her cheek.
She’d heard the whir of car wheels
but no glass-sharp scream from his lips.
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Submission Name: Falls Road
