Ní Féidir Leat Dul Abhaile Riamh

“So you’ve come home, then.”

He’s not changed in the slightest as he stands behind the bar in the selfsame dimness common to all my memories of this place, this very place, my home.

But a shaft of pale sunlight catches the side of his face and I can see that yes, he has changed, he who always seemed to me a man of stone, granite hair and obsidian eyes, marble fingers and few if any words.

Many an hour have I sat my New York desk with closed eyes trying to picture him as he stands now, striving to summon words that might capture the wool of his collar, the muscles of his jaw shifting beneath the skin like a foot beneath the bedclothes.

In this shaft I see him as he is, see him as though for the first time, an old man alone in an empty bar.

What Pegman Saw: Galway

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  1. Joy Pixley

    l really love this one, Josh. Such evocative, emotional imagery, especially all the stony references to the father’s image in the son’s mind. And how true it rings, that people do change, even those who seem as immutable as rock, or that when you go home you realize perhaps they never really were who you thought they were.

  2. Cara Hartley

    Sometimes the curtain lifts and the star of the show is revealed to be simply human. Beautifully written!
    ~Cie from Naughty Netherworld Press~

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