SMIONAGAR by Catherine O’Brien
CW deep griefSmionagar (Irish word meaning shattered fragments or pieces). It is an orchard bathing in fog but you would have described it as a swatch of your life receiving its daily powdered kiss. It is a ramshackle house, your former home, but you would have said it’s where you learned that some parasols don’t always give shade to their own suns. It is the anger that you are gone and that the sunrise doesn’t have the decorum to abandon its rays. It is having no jurisdiction over when and where your unpunctual and formidable smile will thaw the freezing demesne of my grieving mind. It is silly, insignificant things like knowing we pronounce vase and scone the same way. It is the crying shame that not all saw the elegance of your ballerina’s legs as they danced. It is lazy, useless afternoons and the even longer nights that were talked into morning. I never told you that smionagar is my favourite Irish word but only when I’m in a tenebrous mood. It is those conversations we shared that were carbonated by the soda stream of realising we were for all intents and purposes the same. It is those laughs forged by the abstract silhouettes of others’ otherness and our similarities in reverse. It is the free-wheeling anarchy of a concert featuring a violinist on the triangle. It is recognising in hindsight that every moment shared was an occasion. It is all the obsolete joys when the world is devoid of the waterfall of your gentle voice. It is life’s cruelty that refuses to let it scrape its dishes. It is the privilege of calling myself your daughter. It is the defenestration of futures and their gradual replacement with forevers. It is knowing that nothing but love beautified the landscape of your mind as it died.