As You Were

Elaine Feeney

AS YOU WERE

Contents

About the Author

Elaine Feeney has published three collections of poetry, Where’s Katie?, The Radio was Gospel, Rise, and a drama piece, WRoNGHEADED, commissioned by Liz Roche Company. She teaches at The National University of Ireland, Galway and St Jarlath’s College. Her work has been widely published and anthologised in Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, Copper Nickel, Stonecutter Journal and others. As You Were is her fiction debut.

Also by Elaine Feeney

Poetry

Where’s Katie?

The Radio Was Gospel

Rise

For Jack and Finn

We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds’ feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.

Virginia Woolf – On Being Ill

I want to take my mind off my mind.

Mike McCormack – Notes From a Coma

Pisreógs

I didn’t tell a soul I was sick.

OK, I told a fat magpie.

She was the first beating heart I met after the oncology unit and she sat shiny and serious on the bonnet of the Volvo.

One for sorrow.

And I saluted her with that greeting you give when you find yourself alone and awkward with one magpie and she flew away, piercing her black arc through the sky blue.

An arrow points to You Are Here. This is OK.

Breathe.

You are just a dot. Swirly Space.

Breathe.

No one will ever find you.

Good. This is a good thing.

Thump.

onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten

Thump.

After saluting Magpie, I sped at one hundred and thirty-nine kilometres per hour out along the M6; stone walls hurled past and end days of August conspired with night, letting a cold dusk down. Thirty-nine. Fitting. On the car’s windscreen, a fog was creeping around my eldest son’s initials, traced inside a fat heart.

But I was Fine.

Father always told me I was Fine. So as the years went by I grew increasingly mistrustful of bad-news bearers. Miss Sinéad Hynes was fine. Father said so. I was Fine. I am Fine.

I will be Fine.

By Jesus when I get my hands on her, I’ll fucking kill her; I’ll throttle her, that little cunt. She’s fine, and she pretending to be sick. Truth is, there is absolutely nothing wrong with her a’tall, but I’ll tell you what, there’s a lot wrong with the old ewe twisted on her back all night, and she didn’t even bother to check her, just even once, throw a quick eye on her. She wouldn’t mind a china cup, that one. Where is she? Under here? Here? In the cupboard? Hot-press? Come out! Come out! Wherever you are! Feefifofum. I smell blood. Where in the name of good God is she? Leaving an old ewe all the night through on her back. Reading books somewhere, and she isn’t sick, she’s fine. There’s not a thing wrong with her. Fine. Hiding is all she’s at. Afraid of work, that bitch, well, she can tell that to the dead animal, so she can, reading books. I’ll give her books when I get my hands on her.