Tumble
The city appears as little more than a smudge on the horizon.
“Where is it you want to go? Dispatch didn’t give an address.”
“134 Highland Row.”
He doesn’t show emotion. His identification photo looks like self-portraiture. I briefly entertain the idea of jumping out and hailing a different taxi but rain has christened itself jewel of the season so I sow my bum to the seat. I soon learn silence is unimpeachable for him. What I don’t know is that he has six kids and a recliner he sits in when home that they climb like newly fallen snow. He’s tolerant of them but especially child number six who unwittingly helped to heal his wife’s broken heart.
I chose this city because it felt so spatially distant from my own. Light bounces down streets and corridors of steamy traffic in broad swaths of bright and night.
The text caught me on the precipice of sleep.
Needed substitute teacher. Indefinite period due to sick leave. Working with classes you’ve previously taught here. Immediate start. If interested, call me.
“Hi, Helen.”
“Ciara, how wonderful to hear from you. I take it you’re interested?”
“I am. I’m on my way now.”
“Fantastic. Thank you. We’re so glad it’s you.”
St Catherine’s is a truly special place. It’s a place that gave a voice to the voiceless. It taught me that the syllabus forever contends with the soul as a fortress of divided heavens. It is here that a student told me
“When I lose interest, I lose that envy that makes me want to learn.”
I’d felt for him. I’d felt like we were two sides of a collapsing bridge rebuilding its collisions. He’d been narrating what needed to be known.
It is here I assigned a creative writing exercise and a student wrote about a bird who swooped under bridges to capture what disappears. It ended with a broken beak and her storyteller starved.
I’d asked her to explain why the bird had to die and she’d told me that something always breaks the reflection of the birds. I’d sent her story to a competition and the judges commented that ‘this is what artwork does, it doesn’t hide’.
I wanted to offer her some personalised feedback but it seemed too unworkable and too absurdly abstract to say tuck your knees into your chest and bend your head well when you tumble.
I arrive after fourth period has begun. When I walk in, someone comments ‘Oh, look! The storyteller is back’. The comment receives a tight canopy of giggles. I walk to the whiteboard and write today’s word of note
Antinomy
I ask the class if anyone can help me define it and wait for any conjecture. When none comes, I say
a fundamental and apparently unresolvable conflict or contradiction
My breath catches slightly as I offer the examples
“In great beauty there is evil. In great evil there is beauty.”
My work is done when the voices kickstart a debate.
Mary has a Castlemilk Moorit
Mary has a little lamb whose fleece is a distinctive shade of brown and it follows her most but not all places she chooses to go.
Mary’s little lamb lay beside her on the intercity bus and attracted attention when she stopped breathing. It amazed those present how a creature so agile and lively could declutter the chaos.
Mary’s tenacious lamb would punch or shank a juggernaut in the throat for her; he’s certainly a lamb who exemplifies what happens when you choose happiness every day.
Mary’s tender little lamb permits a chunky white feline to ride around on its back while munching on broccoli.
Mary’s thoughtful lamb ran and would run again and again to the puffy moon and back just to keep her amused.
Mary has a little lamb who thinks that marmalade should be renamed orange parade.
Mary never kept a man, having never found one who was willing to work the land, or live in the house with a spade. The lamb knows she kept one photograph of him; her arm is linked in his, his eyes are vapid slippers on carpeted floor. Mary remembers the precise moment she became willing to lose everything and chose to live alone in her meh-loud glade. Yet when tears come, they exit her face dramatically like rain drops jump bulbous-headed from a Himalayan blue poppy.
The lamb knows when Mary is projecting the perfect facade and knows too when it needs to be razed to the ground. The lamb has a spectacular tantrum that backfires. Mary has a sprawling countryside home with adjacent stables. The lamb sequesters himself in a far east corner of a disused stable having staged a touching farewell surprise. He then waits like Bruno, her blind dog, who often paces the yard waiting for a friend to play with. He learns to speak as the darkness gathers and his heart gets achy. Mary’s stupid lamb makes a mistake that costs us all dearly and discolours his soul. He stays in that stable embittered and broken drifting to thorn in flourish while Mary scours the land for the face that used to lick her hand.
Raise your hand now if you possess any information as to the whereabouts of Mary’s little lamb. Be the comma in the pause, too much is not too little, be the shimmering wing to unsettle the bramble from the sun.
Catherine O’Brien
Catherine O’Brien is an Irish writer of poems, flash fiction and short stories. Her work has most recently appeared in Ghost Parachute, BULL, X-R-A-Y, Frazzled Lit Magazine, Irish Country Magazine, Washing Windows V and Bending Genres. You can find out more on X @abairrud2021 and Bluesky catherineobrien.bsky.social.