The Unsaid

Part One

caption...Photo of Ireland from boat to Holyhead April 4th 2023

I’m sat on a too small seat, staring out at a grey blue Irish Sea. The distance between me & Ireland is stretching, in the same way time stretches the seams of what it is to a know a person; what it is to know a place.

The smaller Ireland gets the more bereft I feel. It’s a feeling I judge. I do not have a right to feel this way. After all, I am British…

There is a woman opposite me laid on a faux leather bench with a scarf covering her eyes. Two women gobble down duty free beer at the bar & gesticulate their inebriation loudly. The motion of this rocking boat is described by the bodies temporarily inhabiting it. We move like the young, limbs unaccustomed to space. Wide gaits salvaging balance & control. The intercom declares duty free shopping is open. Agitation arises. Bodies disturbed by sea sickness haul themselves upward & resentfully motion down the stairs towards the shops & the bar. I stay seated. Unwrap a squashed and soggy sandwich from my bag, dunk my hand into the ready salted crisps. I make myself comfortable.

People-watching is something I have always done. Since being a child, I have watched folk. This often got me into trouble. I recall a memory of being threatened by an elderly woman in Doncaster for staring at her. I was 8/9. I remember the smell of her loneliness. Stains of old milk dried to her rough woollen skirt. The whisps of hair that framed her lips. The empty shopping bag that was nearly as big as she was. As a child I was not discreet. I was wide eyed & still. A spring hare caught in the headlights bowled over by humanity.

I think of John & Anne & Michael. I think of the ones who had to leave. Who made the journey I’m making now across a grey blue Irish sea.

What did they observe?

“No blacks, no dogs, no Irish”. Bedsits above pig sties. Maimed fingers unable to play. The drink. Kavanagh. Dreams of privacy & open fields.

Waiting Room

by Nessa O’Mahoney

The rules for survival:
don’t catch an eye
on the first day,
look away
if their blank grief
grazes over you.
 
If still here the next,
permit a faint smile,
a nod to a fellow traveller.
But keep your space,
don’t approach
unless invited
and only then
with care.
 
Avoid those
with a story to tell,
a need to eat you alive
as they rave
about hands squeezed,
the twitch of a closed eye.
 
You can’t spare
a shred, a prayer;
it’s dog eat dog here.
The odds are too high,
if somebody has to die,
let the noose swing
elsewhere.