Stanzas: Monthly Chapbooks May 2015: Equality | Página 19

God wouldn’t it be a shameful sinful shame on Daddy if I had to sit on the couch
and tell him who I sat on last week and he looking at Mammy and her mouth catching
flies looking back at me. He gave Johnny’s neck a fine squeeze for a lot less but Johnny
was a bastard and not in the biblical sense but in a worse way and he still is with that
thing he drives up and down the estate what is it? A Jetta or something I don’t know,
I couldn’t be listening to him and I know he thinks I have notions and I suppose he’s
right.
I have notions. I do. Notions of what Charlotte does when the lights go out and
she brushes her teeth standing on the cold bathroom tiles and whispers mirror, mirror
where is my breath and love to give her while she takes off her business suit by the
bedside locker and slips under those icy satin bed sheets made cooler by an absence
that made her heart grow foul. But to hold her hand. Dillon never hold’s Abby’s hand.
Not when they go anywhere and I’ve sometimes caught him a pace ahead of her on the
footpath with his chin up and looking through the shop windows at a world of plastic
irrelevance. So much for granted and so easily got when I think of Charlotte’s grip as
we stroll down O’Connell street on a grey and hazy morning and gaze at the clothes
in River Island because every day’s a blessing mixed in Subway’s coffee and maybe
nobody cares and maybe I won’t wake up but I do.
I do. Say those words Abby because Dillon surely won’t and you deserve more
and if you want to go to that island then leave and meet the fairies and oh God Abby
the more I think of it you really are a hoot. What is it you told me, wait now, ah yes
about Oisín and Niamh and how she brought him over the sea to charm him with
the underworld so as he’d never want to leave her side though he grew bored with all
that trickery but Dillon is already the miserable old man who hit the dirt in Ireland.
Wouldn’t give him the time of day.
What time of day is it? Quarter past twelve. Suppose I should go home for dinner.
Mammy does a lovely roast when my cupboard is bare. I love Mammy. I do.

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