6.20 pm

She does not love you back. She does not love you back and all the things that means for how you feel and how you are and even who you are. Alice does not love you back and it is like black curtains at the side of everything and you can only exist between them, and the space is getting narrower and narrower, and there is the buzzing noise still in your head. You might faint.

You can walk without seeing, you can walk on a street with tears rolling down your face without being seen. You can walk past a building that you know somehow is the pro-cathedral, and only notice it because of the sleeping bags on the steps. You can be a body in space, and time is collapsing, but no one will see, only you can see, and you can’t see because there are tears filling your eyes and on your cheeks and dripping off your chin and salty in your mouth.

You begin to see again only when you reach a junction and hear a horn go and realise you have stepped off the pavement and onto the tarmacadam of the road and the mirror on the side of the car has almost touched you. And it is like a thing happening to your body and suddenly you notice you are on a street and you notice all the other bodies, all the lives, all the people walking with a purpose invisible to you, but unmistakably there. They are going somewhere, coming from somewhere, going to be with someone. Women carry bags, they walk lopsided, men bounce more, hands in their pockets. The children are in a different world, hurry up slow down stop doing that. They wear clothes, different colours, mainly black or grey, they are important but also somehow ordinary.

You notice everyone has a phone, they are talking or listening or holding, looking, monitoring, all of them, armoured. Women with faces like masks, men with caps and slouches, that’s the young ones, then there’s a divide, an edge, and you see it, you’ve never seen it before but you see young people and old people, where are the people in-between, the people not in shoes with sloping worn-out soles, without shopping bags, you search for a face, a back you recognise, you see no one, but they see you. A group of girls outside a shop and they are bright, they are loud, they are happy. Under the bridge for Connolly train station and maybe you could get on a train and go home? Or maybe you could go somewhere else, to the south end perhaps, to stand on the stony beach and look out at the sea, the acidifying rising sea. Or go north, follow its line the few stops to her house, sit in Fairview Park where you both had a picnic once, sit and watch and wait. Only that would make you afraid, under the trees, and maybe she would come home by another way. Instead you could stay on the train and go further, get off at Howth, or further yet over the bridge that nearly collapsed and see the sea there instead, it is always the sea you want to see. But then, you would still be alone, so you turn away from the station’s tower, and now you are on streets you don’t know, turning by instinct but your instinct must be all wrong because you-are-so-autistic and she said no and she looked at you like—

You walk past more girls hanging on railings and they call out to you but you’re elsewhere, there’s a child’s mini-buggy in the middle of the pavement, so you walk around it and there aren’t really cars on this street, you notice that and you notice the mix of old and new buildings and the old ones are nicer, and how can you be heartbroken and still noticing things like this? The world is meant to dissolve or be over and you should be blind because you can’t see her any more because she looked at you like—

There is a playground on this street with trees, and nature is still there, though it’s boxed in and fenced in and only allowed in rectangles, and someone has a scooter on the pavement and you don’t move as he scoots towards you and he’s in a black jumper and black jeans and you have time to notice his eyes are blue, sort of, and his elbow hits your arm and you stop walking, and there is a lady then who touches you on the shoulder and says, ‘Are you alright,’ and you don’t say anything but your face is still wet, and the lady says to the man beside her, ‘I think she’s not all there,’ so you say, ‘Sorry,’ and your voice still works and then you say, ‘Thank you,’ because she was nice, and you keep walking.

There is a sign: N1, N2 and

The building on the corner has big windows covered with ads for the kind of shop that could be there and now you can get your laundry and an ironing service, years of experience and Hill 16 pub, what does that mean? It’s uphill is what it is. The old buildings are back now, plain and tall, and there are more trees in another square, all the trees in the city.

You see a spire and you could turn right, you could go straight, but somehow your body turns left towards the stone spire, and you see signs for B&Bs and maybe you were here once with your mother to see a play in a small room where you had to stand watching an older man crying because the younger man couldn’t love him. And afterwards Claire had bought you an ice-cream and you had eaten it, first breaking off the chocolate in shards and then licking the creamy inside bit, the actual ice-cream.

There is a yellow-and-green-mosaic shop on the corner selling news, and a closed-up shop called Tip Top Cakeshop, and you look up at the street signs and the streets are called great, which sometimes means pregnant and sometimes means in love. I was great with her. But she looked at you like—

The church ahead of you has scaffolding and then there is another square with more trees, and you know from a school trip that it is the Garden of Remembrance, and you don’t know how a garden can remember. And beyond you see the gallery that you visited too, with the LED installation outside of a walking lady, always moving, always lit up, and you are like her, walking walking, and you are not like her because she does not feel anything, she is only a machine.

The gates of the square are closed and there are a few men standing around, there is a bag on the ground between their feet and they are drinking out of cans, and you look at them as you wait for the lights to change. Inside the railings you can see the pool that reaches to the end and there are steps and then twisting metal figures who are the children that were cursed into being swans. You know that feeling, of being trapped, of the outside not matching the inside, of needing something that will come from outside to set you free.

It is getting darker.

Maybe she is in the pub, and maybe she’s with Jo, and maybe she’s with the guy whose name does not exist. So you go downhill and there are lots of people because finally you are at O’Connell Street, so you walk under the square trees and past pillars and spires. You feel hungry and you stop at the counter, a booth really, because it smells good. The girl in the hairnet fries hot batter for you and dips it in sugar and you take the bag and it’s hot and sweet and crunchy and you shouldn’t eat food like this because blood-sugar-levels, but you need this because fuck the rules right now because she looked at you like—

Why did she?

You get to the river again and you stand on the bridge and you look towards the sea you can’t see. There’s a new bridge which Claire showed you because it is named after-a-woman-at-last. But the only thing you think is that you could turn here and go back. You could turn and walk and retrace and resay, or say sorry or say other things you don’t mean, or stand or sit and feel small, there are so many ways to feel small. You could do these things and maybe she would like you again. Maybe. Maybe it would be enough just to sit near her. But you look at the lights on the water and the lights on the ugly tower that-isn’t-ugly because it has pretty lights on it now, and who cares about carbon when this is so pretty, and you look at the railway bridge and the old Custom House beyond and the tram tracks in front of you. And somehow all these things mean you do not want to go back.

Heart of stone Heart of a lion Heart of gold Heart’s desire Heart and soul let your Heart rule your head pour out your Heart to somebody wear your Heart on your sleeve set your Heart on something speak from the Heart win someone’s Heart have a big Heart the Heart of the city a broken Heart.

You know that the pain in your chest is because you are tired and not breathing deeply enough. You know that the heaviness of your body is because you have had sugar and you are tired and you are not breathing deeply enough. You know that you feel lost because you are not following your plan and plans are what make you feel safe. But you also know that the pain in your chest and the heaviness and the lostness are because you have a broken heart and sometimes the metaphor is real.

People are walking – going going going.

So you may as well go too.

You take your broken heart filled with sugar and you cross at the lights and the cars and the people and you go out in front of them all and you go around the front of Trinity, and you follow the tram tracks and you notice the hole where the building used to be, with the cranes lit up, and your legs are complaining because being heartbroken is exhausting and you are ready-to-drop but you keep walking, past the bookshop and the Hibernian Way and the mayor’s house until you get to the top, until you are standing facing Stephen’s Green. There is no vision like earlier, no bleached or poisoned trees. The park is closed. So you cross the tracks and you walk around it and the sugar is keeping your veins alive and you don’t know, really, what level feels like anyway so, head spinning, you walk between the cars and along the railings till you reach the far edge where you cross again. The sign on the wall says Earlsfort Terrace.

You look ahead and keep walking, trying not to stumble, and then you see the stone swags of the gates and the lights of the concert hall are on.

They’re on for you. Which is a thought you could not have imagined having after she looked at you like—

And your phone is buzzing. How many times now?

Pull it out to look at the screen even though that feels like hope and despair all at once.

WHERE ARE YOU?

WHERE ARE YOU?

WHERE ARE YOU?

Here.

And you know that you should reply, because Claire is worried, because Claire is your champion. But you also know that you are doing the thing you need to do and she would not understand because she does not think of you as someone who can be in love and that is sad and true and lonely but you will not give it up, this love, not even when she looked at you like—

And you go up the steps and a man opens the door for you, for you, and it’s bright but there aren’t many people so you’re okay, and you see a sign for tickets and you cross the red expanse between the white pillars and you say your name at the lighted window and they give you a brown envelope and it has ‘P. O’NEILL’ on it and you open the envelope and the woman at the counter points and you go through doors and see chandeliers and more doors where a woman checks your ticket and asks if you have a guest and you say no, which nearly rips your guts out, but you’re in now and you find the M and the 17 and it’s your seat or you could sit in 18 too, but you look at it and think, that’s where she would have sat. Except she said no and looked at you like—