The words struck the air like a stone in water.
I don't know why I answered, only that the reply came before thought, as if it had been waiting in my throat longer than memory.
“Níor stop mé riamh,” I whispered.
I have never stopped.
I had played for both: for the ones who died in the ditches, the green of the grass still on their lips and no one left to scream for them. And for the ones who went to America, the ones who found the silver and the bread, but spent the rest of their lives starving for the sound of rain on this roof.
The room stilled.
There was something in the way the Irish left my mouth,
not careful, not studied, but effortless,
as if the Irish had remembered me first.
Not learned.
Remembered.
Speaking English suddenly felt like a betrayal, a shallow breath taken in a deep ocean. It was the language of the landlords, the cold tongue of the ledger and the eviction notice. It was the language that had stood over the dead and told a starving people they didn't belong to the land they were dying on. And Irish was the only language the soil recognised as its own.
