1970s Tourister

For oft, when on my couch I lie 

In vacant or in pensive mood,   

They flash upon my inward eye 

Which is the bliss of solitude...

-William Wordsworth "I wondered lonely as a cloud"

Steam rising from my hands, hot water in the sink, and my clothes (hot and wet) gives the dim kitchen a fantastical feel. Outside the line is free, except for clothes pins I know are pastel but look sallow in the darkness settling on the hills and in my concrete backyard.

The hum from the heater and the line “If you don’t love me, let me go,” steadies my breath. The sounds remind me we’re never alone and that silence is to be appreciated by skeletons. Everything is romantic and cold and Dublin loves me.

I hear dragonfly wings, waves, banjos, people of geography—their whispers wash into a constant buzz, like a heart beat. Sometimes I hear my name.

Change the song, turn the heater on high—adjust the living room because it won’t change itself. There is either terror or brilliance in this vacant mood.

The light above the table wobbles in the waves of radiation and then I’m in a train station with Grandpa’s 1970s Tourister in hand and I’m looking back through familiar smoke into the lens that captures part of me: running, black and white, suspenders, old man’s cap. The photograph I imagine is on the mantle here, over the electric fire.