Mum moves like rinse water— warm, grey, going where she’s poured. Hands red-raw from bleach and bones she can’t scrub clean. She hums when she’s bone-tired, not for tune, just to keep from cracking.
Dad says work is hard— but only ever sits, rail grease on his boots, beer in hand, trophy beside him: Highest Goal Scorer, 1983.
He holds it like a wound that never scabbed. Says he could’ve been something if Mum hadn’t— if I hadn’t—
Doesn’t say the rest. He just drinks.
Then one day— a yellow dress. Hand-me-down. Sunlight sewn into thread.
Mum steps into the yard like she’s forgotten someone might be watching. Strips to the greying cotton of her and pulls the yellow on— slow, soft, like trying on a life that didn’t happen.
She twirls once. Eyes closed. A ghost of a girl smiling through the cracks.
Then boots. The back door slams. Slut In a voice like wire.
The dress tears in two directions— fabric, then her. She clutches the scraps to the parts of her he once loved.
And shrinks.
That night— beer cans breathing, trophy glinting under weak kitchen light. He slumps. Mouth open. Gone.
I take the trophy, glass warm from his hand. Step barefoot through bindii to the path. Raise it.
It catches moonlight for a second. Then gone.
The sound is clean.
I lay the shattered pieces by his chair, like they fell when he groped for the past and missed.
My grandmother called it
Irish fire, said it raged
through my father
hotter than Beli Mawr’s bum.
She was long dead
when it finally flared
fiercer than he could contain.
The embers of his eyes
scorched childhood’s
last leaves to ash,
left them smoldering.
days of stone 