I think he died for me...

'I think he died for me.'  You looked at me expectantly, 'Greta said that didn't she?' You were gesturing to my own dogeared copy of Dubliners in your lap.

It was one of those days, those beautiful sunny days that our mid-twenties seemed to be made of. We were lying in the grass, outside the lecture hall, coffee and half eaten sandwiches lay abandoned around us. The smell of illicit smoke drifted out from behind the science lab. The physics students were the worst for it, maintaining that the weed opened their minds so they could understand the complex world of theoretical physics. High, they could debate the merits of String Theory over Loop Quantum Gravity, or whatever it is that theoretical physicists talk about while high. Probably Stargate Universe versus Atlantis if we're being honest.

'Hey!' You tapped me with your highlighter on the knee, 'I asked you a question.'

'Yeah, Greta said it about Michael Furey, to Gabriel.' You were still looking at me. 'What?' I asked, feeling uncomfortable under your gaze.

'Well... Did he die for her?' You were smiling, that smile.

I wanted to tell you yes. I wanted to tell you that poor Michael Furey risked his already failing health to throw stones at Greta's window, that it had meant he loved her, and that he died in order to let her know. It wasn't true though. At least not to me. Greta's statement that Michael Furey died for her was just romanticism. What Michael died of was consumption, not a broken heart. We had discussed the line in lectures and tutorials, you would have known if you bothered to attend your lectures.

It was easy to see the romance in Joyce, the romance in Ireland, it wasn't always so easy to see the truth. That's what Joyce was saying, the Irish, we were too caught up in the romanticism of ourselves. The line was supposed to be a homage to Yeats' Cathleen ni Houlihan, Yeats' feminine representative of Eire, the woman who men would die for, and die willingly. Once again, you would have known this yourself if you had bothered to show up one in awhile, instead of two weeks before finals. I looked at you then, feeling a compulsive urge to land this all on you, to corrupt the image you had of Greta, of Joyce, of Ireland and maybe even of yourself.

As I opened my mouth a breeze drifted over the grass and swept itself up in your hair. You laughed as you tried to catch the wily strands, drifting around your face, obscuring you for a second or two. I watched you, taking each strand and pulling them back into your hands at the nape of your neck. You leaned over, so close to me I thought for a minute that this was the moment, instead you lifted my ballpoint pen out of my open notebook and used it to pin your hair. You sat back, a satisfied smile on your lips, and picked Dubliners, cracking the already battered spine some more.

'Are you planning on answering me?' You were pouting now, half mocking half serious.

I thought again for a moment and said 'Yes, he died for her.'

As you lay back in the grass, sighing with the romanticism of it all, I thought about what I should have said.

Michael Furey didn't die for Greta, but I would die for you.    

The Fields

Somewhere in this place there is a tree that bares two names. I’m not even sure if it even still exists. Perhaps, the universe in some attempt at poetic justice, tore it down shortly after the end. It would only have been fair, but when has the universe ever been fair to us? I know if it was still there I could find it if I really wanted. I hope it’s waiting there, somewhere on the far boundary of Mahon’s land, in a row of twenty or thirty trees, the past waits. I stand here, staring out my Mother’s kitchen window, the memories of my childhood should over power me, the smell of apple tarts long since eaten, the sound of my Father walking in the door, but all I see are images of you and me. I can see, from the window, myself as young as twelve and as old as nineteen, running out the back door, my Father yelling at me, my Mother fretting, and me, running, long hair streaming, down the garden to meet you. My hair was so long then, do you remember? You used to say that when I ran it was like I had a cape, streaming out behind me. It was too long really, it was constantly getting caught on the rough wood of the garden fence as I climbed over it to meet you in the empty field between our two lands.

Yesterday, I extracted myself from my present, saying I needed to walk the garden, alone, alone with my past. I walked down to the old fence, it’s wood is peeling and chipping, the rung where I used to put my foot is gone now, rotten with the weight of my life journey which all passed over this fence. It was here that I realised for the first time that we were no longer just friends. It happened when, at fourteen, you reached up to my waist in order to help me down off the fence. I remember feeling flushed, my heart pounding in my chest, my hands flickering nervously, pulling loose strands of hair from my head. I looked at you, through the cloak of my hair, and for the first time I wondered what it would be like to kiss my best friend. Disgusting, I decided, and then promptly punched you in the arm, complaining about you treating me like ‘a girl’. Your look of puzzlement is one image of you that I cherish like a lost photograph in my mind. For years, when I replayed the moment we first shared something other then friendship, I thought that the look was one of confusion over my ‘girl’ statement, but now, with the benefit of age, and having had more then one man look at me like that, I realise that your confusion, like my own, was about the energy that had suddenly, but subtly changed around us.

It was a surprise and a mystery to us and no one else that we fell in love. Everyone saw it coming, our friends, the priest, the teachers in school, the residents of our small town, even our parents. The cries of ‘Look out for that Riordan fella, he’s trouble!’ stung when we were friends, but cut me like knives when we became more. They never understood that sins could be inherited. After that day things changed for us. We were still friends, but you started helping me down from the fence when I climbed over it to meet you, and I started letting you. We would savour that brief contact, your hands on my waist, and when I turned around to face you, ready for the day of adventure, or school or just walking the fields, we stood for a moment, closer than friends stand. Then as if a spell was cast and broken we would snap apart and begin discussing the world according to us. If it was fourteen that I first thought I might like to kiss you (if the idea hadn’t been so disgusting), it was fifteen that I realised that what was between us was not just friendship. We held hands, we shared secrets, we lived in each others pockets, sneaking out late at night to lie in empty fields and look up at the stars.

I think it was your future I fell in love with. You wanted to leave this place, to go to a city like Dublin, or maybe London if you were in a particularly adventurous mood. I was always paralysed with fear when you talked about moving away. ‘What will I do?’ I wanted to say, ‘How will I live without you here?’ I never wanted you to go, but I’d be damned if I was going to say it out loud. I never really understood why you wanted to leave so much, you hated talking about what things were like at home. You steadfastly ignored my questions about bruises and cuts, preferring to distract me with something else. Eventually I stopped asking, and you stopped hiding the bruises and the scars. It was our version of a compromise. Then one day, as we lay in the sun in the empty fields, twirling long blades of grass in the air and watching the light fracturing around us. You leaned over me to grab one of the cans of coke I had stolen from my fridge at home. Your t-shirt lifted up and all I could see were the welts. Welts you kept hidden from me. I never fully understood how it got so bad, I knew you thought you deserved it which is why you hid them, and I knew that no matter what I said to you, this would always be your secret shame. I couldn’t resist running my finger along the edge of one of the scars, I was surprised at how smooth the skin was, how deep the wound must have been. You pulled back, tugging your t-shirt down, I knew I had tears in my eyes, but I didn’t know how to clear them away without you noticing, so we stared at each other for awhile, and then when I opened my mouth to say something, anything, you leaned in and kissed me.

I remember the next two years as one long summers day. In my mind, we spent two years smiling, laughing and loving each other. We didn’t keep it a secret, but we kept it to ourselves. It would have been foolish to try and keep it under the radar, with everyone smiling at us, secret smiles that said they knew. The parish priest lectured us both on young love, hormones and waiting. We were waiting, but we didn’t know for what. I know that we spent two years moving further and further to that emotional and physical end point, getting closer and closer in the empty fields, in the middle of the night. My Mother washed grass stains out of my pyjamas, but said nothing. My Father just sulked, I’m sure my Mother must have said something to him, but as my curves filled out I found my Father had less and less time for me. I was a woman now, no longer his little girl, I don’t think he knew how to handle it. I know he wanted to blame you, to hurt you before you hurt me, but he didn’t get the chance. I remember the first time we talked about it. All our friends were doing it, or so they told us, but for us, or for me, I never asked you, it wasn’t about passing some sort of milestone. I was ready to be yours completely and for you to be mine. We made a decision for it to happen on Christmas Eve, we would meet, in the tree line on Mahon’s land and commit ourselves to each other.

Weeks after we had made our decision, during Christmas Week, you looked more tired then usual. Your body was more tender then, and I saw scars I had never seen before. I knew it was getting worse, but I don’t think either of us realised just how bad it would get. I remember so clearly the blood curdling scream the eve before Christmas eve. I was awake, lying on my bed, thinking about what would happen tomorrow, when the gut wrenching sound drifted out of your home and into mine. I jumped up, pulling on my boots and tucking my pyjamas into them. I ran down the stairs towards the back door. I had my hand on the door when my Father stopped me. He had a coat on over his own pyjamas and his gun in hand. The only other time I had seen him with his gun was hunting season, when he was covered head to toe in mud and dear scent. Seeing him with the over-sized gun in his pyjamas made me want to laugh, and to cry. ‘I’m going with you.’ I said to him, giving him the stubbornest look I could manage, it looked frighteningly similar to his own. He shook his head, not even responding to my statement, and opened the backdoor stepping into the darkness just as my Mother came behind me and put her arms around me. ‘He will be alright love.’ I wanted to ask who she was talking about? But we both knew. I waited for my Mother to release me, she went to stick the kettle on, and in that split second I was gone, out the backdoor, running through the garden, and up over the fence. My Father wasn’t too far ahead and when he heard me approach he said nothing. Maybe because he knew trying to send me back would be a futile waste of his time.

When we arrived at the boundary of your land my Father paused for a second and checked the barrel of the gun, ‘Stay behind me. No matter what happens.’ He growled at me over his shoulder. We could still hear shouting and crying as we approached the house, but thankfully nothing like the scream that had taken us all from our beds. We were making our way towards the backdoor when it abruptly swung open, your Mother toppling through the open door way and spilling onto the grass. I made a move to help her up but my Father’s armed pinned me to where I was standing behind him. I wanted to protest, but the vision of your Father barreling out the door after your Mother, spitting furious vitriol about her, he was swigging from a bottle of whiskey and for a moment I thought I was caught in something from a Tennessee Williams play. It was very much real though, and I stood paralysed, instantly regretting coming with my Father and witnessing something you had tried so hard to keep from me. I considered, momentarily, running before you knew I was there, but I found I couldn’t even move my legs to turn around. As your Father’s abuse of your Mother grew more threatening your brother Joe came flying out the door, running at your Father, clearly intent on stopping him from what he was about to do. Joe leaped on his back, but your Father just swatted him away as if Joe’s six foot four frame was nothing. With Joe lying on the ground, your Father looked momentarily confused. Looking from your Mother who was no longer moving in the grass to Joe, who looked like he was trying to get back up, your Father moved closer to Joe.

As he raised the bottle in his hand high above his head, ready to bring it down over Joe’s, I heard the click of my Father’s gun and his calm clear voice saying to your Father, ‘Tom, let the boy go.’

I was scanning the door way for a glimpse of you inside the house when your Father dropped the bottle, shielding his eyes from a light that didn’t exist he responded to my Father with a laugh. ‘John!’ He said in mock suprise, ‘What are you doing here? And with a gun no less.’ He laughed a loud drunken laugh, ‘Here to rob me are ya?’

My Father shook his head, ‘Just here to check on Mary and the boys Tom.’ My Father turned his attention to your Mother lying on the ground, reaching out a hand to her, he said, ‘Are you alright Mary?’

Your Father moved closer, ‘She’s fine John. Just a misunderstanding, you know what they can be like.’

Your Mother stood fixing her hair, keeping her face turned away from my Father so he wouldn’t see what I could guess was a series of cuts and bruises from her husbands fists. My Father kept his eyes on Mary and his gun pointed at Tom, ‘I’d like to hear it from herself Tom if you don’t mind.’

There was silence, punctured only by my gasp when your Mother eventually turned to my Father. Her face was swollen and mottled from crying, her left eye was swollen closed and she limped as she shuffled to turn to my Father. I looked at your Father and wondered how someone could do that to someone they love. Your Mother whispered, ‘Everything’s fine John, you and the young lass head on home now. Send Maire my best now won’t you?’
Your Father looked pleased with himself, and part of me really wanted my Father to fly off the handle and hit him the way he hit his wife and children. My Father looked defeated and sad, he watched Joe stand to his full height, his head hanging, refusing to look at my Father. There was another cry from inside the house, one of the younger children was crying for their Mammy.

The sound got louder and a shadow temporarily crossed the scene. It was you. ‘Mam,’ It was a choked voice, were you crying? ‘She won’t settle, can you -’ as soon as you saw me you stopped, letting go of your younger sister who ran to her Mother. ‘What are you doing here?’ Your eyes were on mine.

I wanted to run up the steps to the backdoor and take you in my arms. I wanted to tell you that what I had seen here meant nothing. It told me only what you came from, not what you were, or what you would be. My Father spoke for me, ‘We’re just here, making sure everything’s alright son, why don’t you take your brother and Mother back into the house so I can have a private word with your Father.’

Your Mother spoke up, ‘That won’t be necessary John. It’s a family matter. You head home now.’
I wanted to scream. You walked down the steps to your Brother, wrapping an arm around him and using your free hand to take your sister’s. As you bent to take her, you were so close to me I wanted to reach out and touch you. I didn’t. I don’t think I ever explained to you why I didn’t. You said it was because I was afraid, and I was, afraid for you. I was afraid that if your Father saw something in your eyes that he could take away then he would take it away. I thought it would be better to let him think that you had nothing, but instead, I just made you feel that you had nothing. That night was one of the biggest mistakes of my life, that simple moment, when I could have laid a hand on the curve of your neck and whispered that it would be okay.
When, eventually, my Father and I turned away and began the walk home, I made it to the boundary of our land before I broke down crying. When my Father lifted me into his arms my tears flowed even harder and my body shook as we made our way back to the house.

I remember the next day we went as a family to mass on Christmas Eve. I scanned the parishioners, desperate for a glimpse of you to work out if our plan still existed for tonight. I needed to see you, to know that you were still around, still fighting, still alive. When I saw your Father in the queue for communion I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that if he was here at least he was away from you.

That night we placed the stockings on the fireplace for Santa and we lit a candle in the window, to guide lost souls home for Christmas. When my parents went to bed I waited for an hour, watching the clock tick over to midnight and then I silently climbed out of bed putting my boots on in the same hurried fashion as the night before. I snuck out of my parents house and walked the mile to the tree line on Mahon’s land.

I didn’t know if you were coming. I hoped you were. I hoped that I would be able to see you and hold you. I sat and waited, by one of the taller trees with a clear view of the path you would take from your house. I rested against the tree trunk and waited for you to come. Then, in the blink of an eye, there you were. You stood a little bit away from me, I didn’t know if you could see me, so I moved into the moonlight. We stood there for awhile, like strangers. I didn’t know what to say, or if you wanted me to say anything. While we stood there, I feared that perhaps the magic that had been between us had been undone by the events of the night before. I looked at you as closely as I could with the distance between us and I saw the fear and the shame in your eyes. Or maybe I imagined it, maybe it was my own fear and my own shame that I saw reflected back to me. Eventually I stepped clearly out of the tree line and moved towards you. Gently I approached you, thinking you would bolt, like a frightened rabbit, never to be seen again. I placed my hand on your neck, a gesture of the intimacy I couldn’t give up. I pulled your head  to my shoulder and held you there. We stayed like that for longer than necessary until your arms snaked around my waist and pulled me to you. We kissed, in a way we hadn’t before, hungry and passionate. It was a new side to you and to me, born out of need, the need to devour each other, the need to have our relationship be the only thing that was real, the only thing that mattered.

We both cried. I remember that night so clearly, the stars over our heads, the flickering of the moon as your head moved in and out of my vision. You wondered a lot if I was okay, if this was okay, if the whole thing was okay. I nodded a lot, and grimaced occasionally when you hurt me. It made it real. It made our relationship real, our future meant something now. It was you and me and for once nothing else mattered. Afterwards, you held me. Your fingers tracing patterns in my skin. I wanted to say that I loved you, that right now we were perfect, and that I knew we’d be perfect forever. I didn’t though, I swallowed what I was thinking because for once, you were happy, you were relaxed and you were loved and you knew it. That was all that mattered. As the sky began to brighten you pulled me close to you.

From that moment our relationship changed and our lives did too. We became closer, but in a less obvious way. By silent, mutual consent we had agreed to bide our time and get out as quickly as possible, but when your brother Joe left home when we were eighteen it couldn’t come soon enough. You still didn’t want to talk about it. Even when the bruising got much worse, when the scars could barely even scar before they were opened again. I was afraid he’d kill you.

Then one day, the scars on your back opened leaving blood trails all over your back, soaking your jumper. The school wanted to intervene, you never wanted to go back there. I remember when Sister Aloysius wanted to bring your Father in for a stern talking to you came to me, for the first time directly about this, you were worried, and for the first time I realised that it was not just black and white, it was not just your Father, it was your Mother too. You said, that it was almost worse with her because she knew it was wrong. No matter how many times they begged her, no matter how many times he beat you and the others unconscious, she never wanted to leave, and when she did, or when she was forced to, she went back. She always went back. You worried that if the school intervened they would make it worse.

You wanted to leave, you wanted to go home that night for one last time, to grab your stuff and just go. I said I couldn’t. I was frightened. It was happening so soon, I was worried for you, for your future. Mostly though, I was just scared. I was eighteen, I wasn’t ready to just run. I needed a day I said, a day or two, at most a week. You told me to take as long as I wanted, you said it with love in your voice but the look in your eye told me something else. I just didn’t know what it was. We were stood in my parents kitchen. My Father was due home soon, which meant you would have to leave, I looked at the clock. I asked you to meet me later, as usual. You agreed. I heard my Father’s key in the door, I told you, you needed to go, as you turned to go through the back door you paused for a second, and just as my Father walked in, you grabbed me by the neck and pulled me in. You kissed me, like you had never kissed me before, it enveloped me completely and while you kissed me I felt everything was separated out, that it was just me and you, the way we wanted it.

My Father coughed and we pulled apart, you kissed me on my forehead, and looked at me, I searched your face for a clue, in your beautiful green eyes, the slightly crooked smile, but I saw nothing except you.

That night I puzzled over the kiss, wondering what it meant. I knew it was important, but that was about all I could work out. I’d wait until midnight to ask you. When it eventually rolled around, long after my parents had fallen asleep, I completed the almost nightly ritual of boots and pyjamas and stepped out in the fields. It was quiet that night I remember, a clear night sky showed all the stars in the sky and the moon was almost low enough to touch. I climbed over the boundary fence and waited. When I had waited an hour, I started walking towards Mahon’s fields, maybe you were there, maybe that was where we were supposed to meet. I remember my heart became heavy, it felt like it was a lead ball resting in my chest, my feet slowed and it was difficult to lift them. I knew that you wouldn’t be at Mahon’s, but for some reason I had to still go. I had to go there and wait for you, because whatever happened you would find me and then we would be together, forever. I sat, by the treeline, huddling into my knees to keep warm. A while passed and then awhile longer.

I remember the sound of my Father’s voice, carrying over the fields, the panic in his tone clear for everyone to hear. I realised I had fallen asleep in the field, you must have been worried sick I thought. That’s probably why my Father’s out so early, you probably feared something had happened to me so you told my Father I was no where to be found. I remember I was so proud of you, I thought it so brave of you to confess to my Father of our clandestine meetings, foolish considering I was fine, but brave nonetheless. As I walked out of the treeline and into the fields I saw my Father in the distance and waved. He continued to walk towards me, his feet looked heavy and I wondered just how long he had been looking for me to be this tired.
I walked to meet him, looking around and behind him for a glimpse of you, I figured you had decided it would be best to leave me alone to my Father’s yelling. Eventually my Father came close enough for me to see his face. The crestfallen look he wore was unlike anything I had ever seen on his face before. It was as if he had glimpsed Medusa and simply turned to stone. I thought something must have happened that my Mother must have gotten hurt, that someone in the family had died.

In a way they had. Our family, yours and mine, our future hypothetical  family had vanished. The flaxen haired children we had imagined raising had been obliterated in an instant. The life I saw for us, set far away from the reach of your Father was gone, and even though our future was never real, I mourned for it as if it were the life I was living.

The wake, the funeral, the reception and the anniversary month mass passed me by. I think I was living in a catatonic state. I was raging at the injustice, the loss. I remember one moment from the funeral, your Mother weeping as I went towards the coffin, your Father was gone at that moment, beginning to rot in a jail cell where he belonged, I wanted to shake your Mother. I wanted to slap her, for putting you in harms way, for giving you to the man who would take you from me. I didn't because I knew in my heart of hearts that we had all been victims, it just seemed so unfair that it took you leaving us for everyone to realise what the animal was doing. I never saw them bury your body,  went home and walked the land, down to Mahon's fields and into the trees. I walked amongst them and eventually I came across it. Your message to me, carved into the tree, just our names, that was it. No grand declaration, no heart, no horrifying ‘4eva’ just me and you, the way we wanted it. It comforted me to know that evidence of our love would survive long after both our bodies had returned to the earth.

In the aftermath of losing you I realised how unkind those trying to be kind can be. I heard the phrase 'puppy love' thrown around, as if our love was somehow invalidated by our age. Maybe it was, maybe if you had lived we would have grown up and apart. Maybe that would have meant that when I thought of you, after marrying and having someone else's children I would smile at the memories of youthful love, instead of feeling a yearning for you that I have never felt for my husband. I sometimes think that would be better, a full life in the present, than a half-life in the past. I stopped telling people about you when I went to college, no one understood what I had felt for you, not even me. I told my husband, but I bent the truth, the way you do when you are married, I made it seem as if something sad had happened to a childhood sweetheart, that I was broken by it then but fixed now. I didn't tell him that sometimes when I looked at my children I could momentarily close my eyes and imagine that you were my husband. I do love him, most of the time, and I suppose he is here and you are not and that counts for something, it has to.

Whatever it counts for though, it's not enough. Tomorrow, as we go to mark the anniversary of my Fathers death, two years, how fast time can fly, and how slow it can seem, I will take a moment and I will visit you, and lay white roses a symbol of the love we once held and the loss I feel, even now. We'll leave in a couple of days, the children have to go back to school, but before I do, I will take one last stroll through the fields of our history and our love, to remember you  and to let you go. I don't think I can carry you anymore. I think it's time I moved forward, twenty years later, I feel your soul a lot less now. I feel the loss of you has lessened slightly, enough for me to pretend it is not there anymore. I will go though, one last time through the fields, and I will say goodbye, to you and to me, the girl I once was, and I will move myself from the past into the future. You will  never be far from my heart or my thoughts but the time has come. We will always have Mahon's fields, and the tree that bears witness to our love and reminds me that it was once real.

The World Ended Last Night

The world ended last night,
Like a clock without batteries,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopped.

The world ended last night,
Now I feel lost,
We paid the cost,
We wanted to cross.

The world ended last night,
Now we're here,
The banks of the styx,
Was it worth the risk?

The world ended last night,
Right in your arms,
You held me tight,
But it wouldn't be alright.

Apologies

Well readers (if you exist) I'm sorry for not writing sooner, I've been busy IRL and suffering from writers block and a sense that nothing I was coming up with was good enough. After receiving some very helpful advice of 'Who Cares?' from someone I trust deeply, I decided to throw a poem up, to explore a new medium, and hopefully get the creative juices going. I would appreciate any feedback at all, especially on the poetry as it is not something I've tried since I was a teen! 


I will try to be better with keeping up with the blog and maybe I will post some unfinished stuff just to keep you all entertained.