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kieran dacey boylan
29/M/Sydney    I use formal verse to explore themes of existentialism, horror and the macabre, interspersed with odes to natural beauty. I have works currently published by …
Kieran
22    Processing

Poems

Mateuš Conrad Nov 2021
oh winter sun, how benevolent you are,
how tenderly you peer into the realm
of what once had is now finally losing colour,
on the realm of hibernating insects
bound to hardened cocoons...
           of flowers that only remain root strong...
oh winter sun, how benevolent you are,
work slows down, people become bearable:
less arrogant in their attire...
finally these women can put on clothes that
scream: decorum!
finally my libido can rest...
finally no more inverted, imploded niqab for
the eyes... still the sunglasses but finally...
my libido can rest...
but of course, it happens... there will be some
idiotic ***** who will entertain a Saturday
night out by wearing miniskirts & exposing
their bare legs to the elements of December,
January... years later, most probably:
pokraki... i.e. legs mangled from exposure to
the cold, the wind...
it happened once that i sat outside a nightclub
fully attired... warm cotton trousers...
a t-shirt, a shirt, a hoodie & an flimsy army shirt...
                hood, beneath the hood
a wooly hat...
there they stood... the goosebumps worth
of geese... standing there: chattering a strange tongue
that only teeth understand via Morse code...
silly little imp-girls...
warm up on the parquet of the nightclub,
drop a few ***** shots, yes?
oh sure... that will warm you up...
         silly little imp-girls... who goes clubbing
in winter wearing nothing but a mini-skirt...
the whole lot of them... hugging themselves...
trying to jump up & down in stilettos:
but not actually jumping...
                    it was a beautiful sight...
a man supremely cuddled by the clothes he was
wearing, gloves & scarf too...
drinking a beer & smoking a cigarette...
sitting on a bench outside a nightclub...
as a line of geese that had their feathers plucked
while still breathing were gaining entry to,
probably... the worst *** they'd get in their lifetime...
drunk ***...
      a little bit of alcohol... but too much is:
too much...
- yes... finally my libido is at rest...
no more libido insomnia...
   for the most part they started to dress like grannies...
of course some pull off the classy granny look,
the: mah-tue-rrr look (trill the R, please,
i know the French hark theirs but that's no excuse
to: tarantula bit my tongue when it's an R
in syllables, stressed, sure... forget the trill in words...
no one wants to sound like count Dracula:
blah blah blah...)

O benevolent winter sun... how you grace my skin...
how much brighter you seem than in summer...
since there are so few hours of you throughout the day...
come 3pm when you begin your weary descent
how blinding you are...
yet how you also do not scorch the skin
to make the golden serpent wake...
   how in a month or so i will loose the copper-neck
& the copper-sleeves on my forearms...
back to my white, vampiric, anaemic...
Hyperborean look...
        
O winter sun, i thank you for your retreat,
i thank you for your retreat with
such gleeful bliss...
i thank winter itself too: for pushing you away
(my my, is that a heliocentric or a geocentric
formulation? does it matter...
to read a map, to get from A to B...
a round earth perspective doesn't do ****...
the earth need to be flat in order
to read a map, esp. when standing on the fore
of a group of unruly teenagers,
when... the team at the Glasbury House
for Outdoor Education Centre split the participants
into two groups...
the older boys doing their A-levels
with the younger girls doing their AS-levels...
the older girls doing their A-levels
with the colts doing their AS-levels...
being of the former group...
the latter group was dropped off closer to the return-to-point,
they only had to walk back directly...
perhaps there were some shortcuts...
but could any of the girls read a map?
or, rather... would any of the colts
unloosen their imaginary head that might be
their phallus from imagining potential
suitors... not a chance...
- now, i have to write about this,
i need to discard this memory... i need new
memories... this one cameo cinema is
fudging up my uptake of new memories:
the hope is... if i write it down...
         i'll be released from it...
i was in the group that was dropped off...
**** knows' where, but certainly further afield
than the first group...
someone gave me the map of the vicinity:
i don't know why they handed the map to me...
so... i just asked: where are we?
cheat? every single ******* map in any urban
information point has a map & an indicator
that states, quite (not quiet), quiet plainly:
YOU ARE HERE... a bit like sticking one of those
HELLO MY NAME IS "X" at a speed-dating
event (mein gott, i've been to one of those
when at university, horrible event,
i don't remember it)...
so i asked, where are we? again: cheating?!
what's a ******* point of a map when you don't
know where you're starting from?
sure... you have to find where you're going from
the map... but what's the point of not knowing
where you're starting from?
like... Christopher Columbus didn't know
where Lisbon was... when he set off to find...
the Americas... sure... but this was also an experiment...
i knew what place i was leaving: Glasbury House...
& i was being dropped into an unknown location...
well i need to know at least one thing,
i can't navigate with two unknowns...
that sort of scenario would invoke... being...
rafted... on the seas... a quote comes to mind...
Coleridge:
  water, water, everywhere
And all the boards did shrink;
water, water, everywhere,
   nor any drop to drink...
                         point being...
a phantasmagorical finger "levitated" over me
then... like... ugh... faux pas...
like like the depiction bound to those *******
*******: perhaps Adam ought to have made
a circle with his index and thumb?
when the depiction of God extended his
in that Michelangelo depiction...
mind you... look how weak, how feminine Adam's
hand "posture" is...
he should have been firm... "God's" finger is coming...
to hell with touching phalluses with
a nail's bite worth of scribble on flesh...
here! here's my index curled up with my thumb
slightly curled: O my ****'s worth of interactions
with you! that hand posture is feminine...
on Adam's behalf... God the protruding agent of
the index... Adam the: oh! ah! kiss my hand will you!
*******... ugh...
and look at the statue of David... anything... ahem...
"weird" about? it's disproportionate...
the head is too big for the body!
a massive ******* head on a body that would see
the head topple it like lumberjacking at some pristine
******* pines...
Titian's Paul III...
                  Perronneau's Madame de Sorquainville...
look at the smirk on her...
Mona Lisa can hide in shame...
or rather: her "smile"... is a... HANS! GOTTFRIED!
OTTO! CONRAD!
encore: ein wachslächeln (a wax smile)...
Rembrandt: a precursor to Turner...
almost the same Parkinson's disease...
but at least Turner conveyed landscapes... not portraits /
scenes...
something's blurry about Rembrandt...
like i already knew...
the people of the past weren't exactly
****** or deformed, or ugly...
****** artists, that's all...
well if someone like a Helen could: muster...
a 1000 ships...
she must have been a stunner!
a tenner for every penny saved...
         hmm... i'm still rummaging...Kenneth Clark's
Civilisation.... i'm looking for the antithesis of
Michelangelo' David...
oh i'll ******* find what i'm looking for...
even if i have to stay up to 5am to find it!
ah!   'ere we go!
    Riemenschneider's Adam...
          now that's an "Adam"... one i'd want to ****...
where was i...
oh ****... too many plotlines: ergo no plot...
it's like ***** Burroughs took at interest in
my writing from beyond the grave,
the whole Beat Hotel from Paris woke up &
brought back Tristan Tzara to decipher...
no cut-up methodology here...
i was just reading some Rousseau & thought
the language... eh... slightly "constipated"...
congested... on point... rigorous as one might expect
1 + 1 = 2 to be...
unless...
well no one ever said that a consonant must precede
a vowel... that there must be clear syllables...
that you can't allow two vowels or two consonants
to interact... on rare occasion you might end with
a specified consonant: an N...
or that vowels can exist alone... & that they can break
the rule of crafting syllables: & can meet...
ah... but they can't... i was wrong...
青 "=" アオ
               AO... blue...
but the meaning blue is an ideogram "concept"....
it's not a meaning that can be translated phonetically...
****'s sake... even in Japanese two vowels cannot meet,
nor two consonants...
although: they can... when as something
akin to a grapheme / a Chinese ideogram...
what would manner (NN) look like...
or... chatter (TT) should the Siamese Æ (sorry,
not grapheme, a grapheme would be the greek theta:
for th-ought) diphthong...
call an apple an apple... there are too many technical
terms ruining the narrative...
i'm bound to make one correct noun into
a disaster of a misnomer...

- thank you, winter sun, for receding to the point where
the moon can finally reclaim the night sky
and borrow something from the day,
no longer are the nights so ugly without him,
glaring in the sky, ever mindful cyclops
compared to the beauty of seeing very visibly
with almost two eyes, both the body & the shadow...
myopic moon... obstructed by clouds...

- back to the Glasbury event... we were dropped off
further down the road... i was given a map,
so i implored, were are we?
a finger descended onto the page & indicated:
YOU ARE HERE...
i took charge... mind you... it wasn't easy...
i had a popularity complex in high school...
it wasn't a "popularity" complex when it came
to entertaining the company of the "popular" kids...
the black boys were popular with the white girls,
the white boys were popular with, saic X...
i was leveraging the ******* nerds
playing video games, collecting Pokemon cards...
then again: with the ruffians...
spending Saturday afternoons in car parks...
trying lady luck by spitting down on them from
four stories up...

Peter Richardson... Kieran O'Mahoney...
endless Saturday afternoons...
cheap white lightning cider,
a youth club once existed in a church where
we played snooker where now,
most probably a mosque now stands...
blah blah...
we were once tricked by two girls...
before a wave of rowdy boys came up to
give us a beating... they oddly enough didn't
while Kieran lay on the ground crying...
semi-kicks & me imploring the bunch:
he has my walk-man! i need my music back!
Peter's younger brother was also there
but he did a runner... so, **** me...
3 against... 10, if not more?
those two ***** that enticed us...

well... we managed to escape the scene seemingly untouched...
ha ha...
Kieran did more damage to himself:
by himself when we overstayed out welcome in
South Park & had to climb over the fence...
me & Peter clamoured over... jumping onto our
feet as if we had four...
came the turn for Kieran...
standing on the top of the fence... jump! jump!
so he jumped... & managed to lodge his
underwear in one of the spikes...
for a millisecond we watched him dangle
quasi-impaled by his underwear...
laughter... well... i couldn't imagine it might have been
a particularly enjoyable ****... *******...
i came to my senses, Peter synonymous...
we lifted the poor ****** up & then down
from his predicament...

Glasbury... YOU ARE HERE... again... that's not cheating,
asking where you are, is it?
a benevolent finger descended on the map
and i was off... we took a shortcut through a road
that led into a little wood... we passed the wood
& emerged onto a pasture field...
some cows were grazing... the guys thought it might
be funny to push a cow over,
i advised them against it...

summa summarum: we ended up "beating" the other "team"...
clear as daylight...
i remember we were asked: since there was some spare
time... to exercise in the yard...
clear as daylight... we're exercising...
30 minutes if not more...
while the defeated team descends from around
the bend... all the girls, my peers with an expression
that could only be best read as: HUH?!
paint that... paint HUH?!
can anyone paint me: HUH?! on a woman's face,
can anyone?

i'm looking for a painting of woman, or several
women that reads the meaning of: HUH?!

oh **** me, i know i was spinning some other plate...
i hope i find it...

as usual Peter & Kieran got in the way...
perhaps Samuel might have joined the memory reel...
but Samuel is an altogether different matter...
almost a sacred memory...
that's for me to disclose when ready:
i'm not ready...

done, memory: begone!
fickle creature... of course it will remain...
but i hope it will be less prominent...
after all: i was almost 18 back then...
such memories are building blocks...
i managed to... read a map... guide a group of unruly peers
to success, "success"...
we just arrived early & our reward was some more
exercise... no... the reward was mine...
i managed to read the map & discovered shortcuts
in the make-up of the land...
to be told that you are at a disadvantage because
you are dropped off further away from group A:
while you're the disadvantaged group B...
well... placebo effect? i don't even know the correct naming
of this psychological experiment...

pair up older girls with younger boys
vs. pairing up older boys with younger girls...
only one year apart...
what the hell is pedagogy? eventually: at best...
a cocktail art... hey! let's see what happens!
esp. outside the classroom: in the outdoors!
as much as i'd love to dabble in the chemistry of
the inter & intra-man...
at a distance... i'd rather concern myself with
things that do not speak, pretend to listen,
pretend to see... pretend to feel:
or rather... i pretend for them... most certainly:
do not speak... zilch!

i couldn't possibly want the responsibility
surrounding the moulding of man
should "said" man not become... the ambition
worth of a statue in a public sq.
if i can't be an Aristotle shaping an Alexander...
i see a hammer: i see a nail...
oh... right... "of some use": no... pristine use...
the extant pivot!
beer is an extant pivot too, mind you...
what better way to "drown one's miseries"?
i was thinking of a make-up word...
exactant... EXACTANT...
                   out of: acting upon stasis: loosely...

i'm so almost content in stating:
whiskey first, the cider second that i can't finish a cigarette
having to subsequently write this...
not that there's much to write,
leave me: strain... i would very much so like
to watch some t.v., some movie...
some sport's & Sparta...
no... these toils with letters & memories...

Rousseau & the social contract...
even the name alone... Row-Sow...
look at it in Katakana: impossible...
snippets.... ロ
                             ウ        セ
                                             ウ...
or rather... Row-Sue!

i was wondering... what album did i hear, first?
Tool's aenima or tools lateralus?!

well me & Samuel would head over to
Romford... RM1 was a club... once upon a time...
where teenagers could enter & enjoy under-age drinking...
not that i was unfamiliar with the "practices"...
me & Samuel would walk back from Romford to
Ilford singing Backstreet Boys songs...
while the whole time we were 'ard-up punks /
metal heads... skateboards:
he stole his mother's credit card to pay for "my"
skateboard... he was later found out: fined...
i cowered like a leech when the pogrom on his ethics came...
what was her sisters' name...
Isa... Jessica! one of the Ursuline corpus!
oh i remember the Ursuline girls...
not that i had a hard-on for them:
i learned to ******* early... aged 8 i was doing the Onan
pledge... no... it was more about... RHO-MAN-Sssssss...
paid of like investing in... Sony's mini-disk "ingenuity"...
but every single morning...
those Ursuline girls on the bus...
beside the perfume of the morning... nothing worthwhile
mentioning... Samuels older sister Jessica
& Alex's older sister Samantha...
i remember one sleepover when
i purposively ****** on the toilet seat & one of them
noticed it... i was scolded (obviously)...
but the "matter" was quickly laid to rest...
on a bunch of nothing...

i scratched this CD so much: how?
from over playing it!
i wondered... when did i first hear of tool?
when i was a ****** 16 year old teenager...
how? Kerrang!
                                                my now estranged
uncle used to buy the magazine...
maybe...
(god, let me finish... i want to relax by
listening to some political "dialectic"...
opinion spewing... garbage... ditto-head echoes)...

i'm reading some Rousseau and listening to tool's
aenima...  i ought to hae a stipend for
makings "****" chronological...
in common parlance: **** = thing should a philosopher
ask... thing, nothing... blah blah...
lost appreciation for nouns...
or none to begin with...
i must have listened to aenima prior to lateralus...
i must have put down my homework
& be like: what the ****'s this?!
from stinkfist...
  i never heard anything like it!

it must have been aenima... i remember that summer
back in Poland when i started & finished reaading
the Three Musketeers... long before
Stendhal arrived on the scene with the Red & the Black...
one of those few adaptations on screen
(Ewan McGregor & Rachel Weisz)
of a book that might want you to read the book...
all of Sienkiewicz worked in reverse...
lucky me...

all ******* Celts though, Peter, Kieran, Samuel...
well... perhaps not Peter...
perhaps write an ode to... Alex... Martin:
the crooked teeth so crooked it felt uncomfortable
to bite a sandwich by him?
friendships... oh thank you professionalism...
i don't want to come too close...
friends once were:
now?
      oh forget about... to hell with "adoring" fans too...
someone's interested: fine...
they're not... to the pedestrian line with "you"!
i can allow myself the luxury...
it is a luxury... pass enough distance... animate
objects take on an inanimate object tinge...
hue... hue of... blurry... forgettable...
point of interest at a specified crux via transit...
but... otherwise... a celebratory forgetfulness surrounds
them... not out of spite... or my self-importance as
somehow superior to their: existence...
a shared value... they value their own freedoms
as i value mine...  it's strange: therefore...
how fame arrives at the fore... not posthumously:
yet when the said famous person is still alive...
fame as a reiteration of "fame"?
the hyper-reality of Baudrillard?
sounds like... the overhyped-hyper-reality of... "X"...

but i finally solved the "debacle"... did i listen
to tool's aenima or tool's lateralus first?
aenima... i'm listening to it right now...
i'm getting flashbacks... of the one club we used to go to,
when i still lived in Gants Hill & Romford was
this sacred place... for underage drinking...
**** me... the club didn't have a hard floor...
sickly sweet carpet underlying...
some other club...
     the DJ played STINKFIST...
     ooh... i'm gonna: stinkenfaust!
  i lost my head... i danced like a berserker...
what?
  on the same night i had my second kiss...
what could that kiss taste like: should memory be judged
the proper authority before the court?!
numb-cherry / ox--sweat...
  
that tool's aenima is an eulogy to bill hicks...
bill hicks... a very painful introspective on...
the stereotype of H'americans...
stereotyping themselves...

for me the greatest bill hicks moment came,
not telling a ****** joke...
undermining the concept of metaphor
with the reality of time...
sure... the bible didn't mention dinosaurs...
but sure as **** we were drawing fire breathing
lizards before the discovery of dinosaur bones...
lizards like makeshift "skyscrapers"...
undermine the metaphors of Moses...
such a finite little... loot...
new, "new" poetry "borrowed" from the old....
never undermine what Moses ought not or ought...

no, his greatest moment didn't come
from telling a joke,
it's his look of concern when...
he was asked to share the same interviewee
posit with, a very much drunken
Oliver Reed... no one could have played
Athos... like Oliver Reed did!
no one!
there was Bill Hicks... comedy extraordinaire
reduced to... perhaps tears...
laughing at a drunk... like that...
oh god... it hit: him: hard...
Oliver Reed: Athos! dinosaurs not in the bible:
ha ha... so what's up with humanity conjuring up
dragons?! ***** of fire... who said where
that... astronaut hit earth while the moon was
yawning: the what if: the moon was on its guard...
& the astronaut hit the moon...
earth with a ring of shrapnel like Saturn?!

perhaps i could remember the names of
the women i once loved... Promis... Priya...
Isabella... Ilona... n'ah.... what love i already gave
has now probably become an elephant's graveyard...
it's better to have memory of friendships in one's
progressive years...
i better retain Peter, Kieran, Samuel, Martin, Alex...
ought, within the confines of these times: be deemed
worthy to explore: the unknown...

tool's aenima: a priori...
tool's lateralus: a posteriori...

such sweetened acidity governing this cider...
i want to drink liters of it,
this gods' **** juice!
mehr! mehr! mehr!

proto-german then...
   mer! mer! mer!

proto-german, i.e. not Finnish...
lisää! o.k. that's ****** up...
doubled-up on the umlaut...
so whst's that? lisaaaa?!
                               my ******* arithmetic "wrong"?
is there a transvestite raeding this?
i can stomach a transvestite...
i was once, one, drunk...
trans- "****": the world of
popularity contests can stomach that....
digest it... just as wel: i want to forget about it...
the world can *******: with these "regards"...

i must have missed something...
yes, me & some ivory beautifies,
living it up in the safeguards of Kenya...
my god... some of these Kenyan girls...
past burnt mahogany...
past auburn... past autumn's flares...
i somehow almost forgot about my...
oriental fetish... of petite "things"...
geishas... what not...

             if i'm not being scrutinised...
i'm worried... i scrutize others:
eh... not so worried.
Victoria Kiely Nov 2013
The less-than-tepid air stirred as Kieran walked the streets of his town, passing familiar shops and people all the while. He felt as though nothing held the ability to surprise him anymore. Each day seemed the same: he awoke with a heavy and slow start, went about his errands and studies, finished his tasks and went to the coffee shop on the corner of Adelaide and First Street, where he would take his usual seat by the window.
Today seemed to be no different. He entered the Red Brick Café, moving through the stiff door. He ordered his usual black coffee and placed his things on the table nearest to the window.
His load was slightly heavier today, large textbooks and journals weighing him down. Though he was only sixteen, he had already begun showing interest in studies far surpassing the average teenage parameters of notice. Before him lay the studies of Nietzsche and Marx, as well as several sheets of paper with his own scrawled handwriting, denoting his findings.  Kieran had surpassed the term “average” years ago, even if his father had failed to notice it.
       “Maybe if you would stop asking so many questions and started doing the crap they asked you to in school, you would pass your **** classes” he could recall his father saying to him after the last term.
Even still, he had not been the type to feel the need to please others. Kieran had always been focused on satisfying himself, his questions and his hunger for knowledge. He stopped at nothing to satisfy these basic needs.
        “Medium Black?” the woman had called after preparing his coffee. He retrieved the cup, mismatched and morphed, as they all were in this store. It was part of what he had liked most about it – the mugs served in late summer with the Christmas patterns, the coarse orange glasses that stood on the same shelf. None of the dish wear matched, and he thought this was exactly what gave the shop its character.
         He walked to the single leather couch pulled in front of the table overlooking the window. Through said window laid a perfect view of the people walking past on Adelaide Street. Often times, he had sat in this spot for hours simply watching people milling through the lives they wish they did not live, wondering all along whether they would decide to change.
He opened his new copy of The Introduction to Karl Marx, the crisp cover yielding to his rough hands. The smell wafted from the fresh paper – he had only bought this book a few days ago down the street at the bookstore. Kieran always enjoyed the smell of fresh parchment.
         His coffee had grown cold by the time his wandering eyes had bothered to look up from the page.          Outside the window, the street had grown quite dark, dark enough for the street lamps to have turned on. In the light below the nearest lamp, it had become evident that the first snow had begun to fall softly, slowly, and silently outside of his attention.
Then he saw her. Her auburn hair had been victim to the winter winds and lay on her shoulders unevenly, glistening with new snow. Her tall boots fell above her knees, her jacket cinched just below her waist line. She smiled and looked at the lantern overhead, laughing, admiring. The lines around her eyes creased as she playfully pouted and straightened her scarf, slanted in the cold. She pointed to the door of the café as she approached with her friends.
        She entered and he continued to watch as she striped her gloved fingers, exposing each finger with remarkable delicacy. The light did her a terrible favour and made her already notable features more prominent. Her previously dainty expression held a note of subtle seduction that Kieran doubted that she knew she possessed.
        She stood in front of the counter waiting to order.  “Grab me a seat?” she asked her friend as they slipped into the back room. She glanced over her shoulder and smiled pleadingly at the others.
        “But of course, my lady Briardale”, the other replied mockingly with an equal smile.
         Kieran caught himself before she turned her head further, before she could catch him eyeing her. He quickly flipped the page of his book to look occupied, and she shifted her glance. He raised his eyes, peeking through his lashes at her once more.
         *Briardale.
Victoria Kiely Nov 2013
The wind blew through hollowed out buildings like lungs taking in air in shallow breaths, rattling through the skeletons of forgotten structures. A gust kicked up loosened dirt from the path beneath his feet.  Alone and desolate, the streets of this lost town looked as though they had not been traveled upon for many years now, but still they managed to look almost full – like the space could not contain the contents of what it used to be.
Here stood the ruins, a place Kieran had come to know quite well since his discovery of it in his first year of high school. Though it meant something different to him now than it had then, he still kept quiet of its whereabouts to many.
He used to come to stop feeling, to stop thinking of the things he was surrounded by each day. Now, some days, he had trouble remembering how to feel at all. To him, this place was the only way he could feel what it was like to be himself, or to remember the things that had comprised who he had been in the past years.
Things had changed now, of course. The years had crawled past, many without making very much of an impact on anybody or anything. He felt that the only thing that had gotten him through the tougher times was his first love, Briardale. Briar had been the only person he had shown this place.
He could still remember it now, the first time he had brought her here. He remembered seeing her while she took it in for the first time, wondering what she was seeing; how the ruins had looked through her eyes. Unlike most people who he had known to have seen such a dead place, Briar had surprised him.
“I like it,” she had said, with a small smile playing at the corners of her lips. “It’s as though nothing outside of this is real. It’s like a dream”. Her dark hair bled into the still darker scenery, her composite disappearing into the outlines of the tall building. He knew then that she had understood.
“I like it, too” Kieran replied, watching her without shame as she admired the look of the skyline in the late day. He knew she was completely alone in her eyes, and that she probably didn’t hear his response, that she was hardly listening.
Finally, she turned to him. She opened her mouth to speak, and time slowed. “Why did you bring me here?” she asked, still smiling with wonder.
He knew that he had to tell her, that she probably already knew of his feelings towards her. She was toying with this thought – perhaps even considering it.
He moved closer to her, pacing slowly, intentions clear. He licked his lips. He swallowed audibly, the nerves defacing the moment and nearly spoiling it. He drank her beauty in, allowing his eyes to wander greedily over what he wanted but did not yet have. He wanted her, but it was more than that. He needed her. He realized then –
“I love you”, he whispered almost inaudibly, sharing another secret with her, the woman he had watched grow since they were but youthful and naïve children. “I brought you here because I love you”.
She replied by taking his hand and leading him closer, pushing her into the frame of the broken building behind them. He inched closer, looking at her, beginning with her eyes and slowly moving towards her lips. Their noses brushed and he smelt what he knew to be her scent: burnt cigarettes and pine, a winters evening.
She stared just as intensely at his lips. She had inclined her head so as to become closer still. Kieran could feel her soft breath on his chin. She raised her eyes to meet his and whispered “I love you, too”, and finally, their lips met and crossed the line between friends and lovers.
Kieran steadied himself, reminiscing on the moment, but reminding himself that things had changed. He began walking towards what used to be the old school, the flag still billowing in the autumn wind. He traveled up the stairs, creaking under his every step.
Finally he had reached the top. Standing on what passed as a roof, he looked down onto the desolate town. He watched the dust overturn and fall, the unstable buildings sway. He edged closer to the verge of the building, all the while still watching. Kieran looked directly below, wondering what it would be like if he jumped, wondering if he would survive the fall. Wondering how anybody had survived, and weather anybody lived in this life at all.