That’s when I began to learn the lingo that I intend to speak for the rest of my life. The Irish lingo that I have come to associate with the camaraderie of The Maze and with the breaking of the echoes, and the story, best of all, of a hunger striker who had been part of the first protest and who says that he had forgotten what he looked like entirely, that he had literally no memory of his own face until one day as the sun came blaring through the window of his prison cell a warder was sweeping all of the pish that had run out of his cell, all of the pish that had flooded beneath the door and out into the corridor, this warder had swept it back in, and it came in like the tide, washing up around the edge of his mattress, and he has leaned over and caught his own reflection in this glistening wave, lit up by the sun, in these waters of pale gold, and his own face had emerged as that of a stranger’s, and he saw himself, as if for the first time, as if he had woken up and been given a new identity entirely, that’s me, he says to himself, and he reaches out and he makes his eyes dilate, sets two whirlpools in his eyes with the tips of his fingers, and says that he felt himself hypnotised and that he realised that he had come back to himself, from somewhere that had no name, but that it was there, on the pish-soaked floor, of this shit-smeared cell, where he had come face to face with his real self for the first time and it had given him an inner strength that he never knew before, he had come to himself and given himself permission to be a hero, the king’t ship of the self, he had said, that’s what the comm had read, smuggled in the eye of a penis, boys, I, have, been, given’t, the, king’t, ship, of, myself, and wrote like that too, so as that it most resembled a drunken boat, a royal ship, tossed and raised up over a sea of pish drops, raining down, this river’s made me go where I wanted, this final crossing, to a dirty mattress, in a shallow pool, from sea to final sea, is the same place, only Belfast, is the centre of the world, only Ireland, is a garden, in space, and as they died, I tracked them, I imagined their real bodies, their final bodies, these first and last men, spoken, out of Adam’s Apple, snaking up, into the air, and all of the leaving, above The Maze, is a trapdoor, hidden above these letters, these English letters, written into the earth, into the page, into the soft, suffering flesh, of this page, above them, is a gap, and I picture that same, soft, warm rain, that final torrent of sorrowful drops, raining down, is all that’s left, on Ireland, tears of pity, tears of heartbreak and shame, for the friends and families, left there, down below, tears of sorrow for God’s Own Boys and their lovers, and a shower of pish for the rest of the bastards.