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i rang home from the train station in spain, we were on our way to the vendemia to pick grapes just outside of valencia.
i hadnt rang home in a while, it had been a tough period between us, in my head.
my dad answered. your grandmother is dead.
and then my last coin was gone and the phonecall ended. i held my head in my hands and sobbed my eyes out while marek went off with marta and avoided me like the plague. it had been a tough period between us, in my head.
it couldnt be, i rang her only the other week, from the free phoneline in a squat in barcelona, she was good then, when she remembered who i was.
she was good then. she was always good, i loved my grandmother dearly, i loved her stories about the land and how it had changed over the years.
the wind that whips down the curragh is a fierce and cold one, there were years it brought the snow in the middle of a heatwave, it used to be the horses grazed on that side of the field, where the fence is now, there is a spring there, underground, thats why the horses liked it, these silly men these days, building fences on top of springs.
my grandmother did not eat fruit. i had been bartending for the curragh races one year and started walking to her house from the track, buying a bag of fruit on the way from a man trying to get rid of his last apples and bananas.
i went mad with the news granny, i should have been there, i missed your funeral, i wandered around barcelona totally fucking lost, looking for a graveyard, i drank too much and got my wallet stolen, i m an idiot, please forgive me.
i tried to talk to you, from the tops of headstones, from wailing walls, from steps that go neither up nor down, but you never said a word. stoically, solidly silent, and thats so unlike you, you always had something to say, such wisdom from your chair beside the range in the kitchen that smelled of vegetable soup and sometimes boiled bacon if Bríd brought it back from work.
<span lang="EN" style="font-family:"
;Arial","sans-serif";
mso-ansi-language:EN”>death is so quiet. its life that screams and shouts and wails. i can make out voices, but i think they re only the entrails of memories, and they never say anything to me.