Falls Road

A Chapter by Sel Whiteley

Bereft of two brothers and one fiancé,
she passed their photos to me.
In a rioja 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.
And how she, a child still,
was desperate to comfort him, prayed,
peeled off the glued bandage
to see only cloudy nerves of brain.

She talked of being engaged:
the clear Andytown 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 revolution of car wheels
but no glass-sharp scream from his lips.