She almost walked on. Instead, she sat on the curb beside him. The concrete was cold. A pigeon landed on her knee. She flinched, then didn’t. For ten minutes, they said nothing. Then he handed her the last crust. She tore it into pieces, and when a bird pecked her palm—sharp, living, real—the knot inside her chest gave a single, creaking crack.
She sat on a bench near the fountain, which was turned off for the season. A girl, maybe seven years old, ran past with her father, chasing a football. The girl fell. She didn’t cry. She got up, brushed her knees, and kicked the ball again. 4 seasons dublin
She wanted to argue. She wanted to say that sadness isn't a competition, that grief doesn't hoard all the shadows. But the words turned to mist. They walked home in silence, the wind off the Liffey sharp as a blade. That night, he didn’t stay. The next morning, his toothbrush was gone from her bathroom. She almost walked on
Then she saw the old man.
She had no answer. But that night, on her narrow bed in Stoneybatter, with the swifts screaming past the window, she didn’t sleep. She lay awake, tasting the salt of the sea air that had followed them up from the coast. A pigeon landed on her knee
She met him at a gig in Whelan’s. His name was Lorcan. He played guitar with his eyes closed, as if the music was a secret he was only borrowing. They talked until the barman swept the floor around their feet. He walked her home across the Ha’penny Bridge, the river below black and glittering with reflected streetlights.