Abalone

We were like plankton today surveying the recent wreck, the parched Atlantis, the sunken city,

Dublin.

We left the submersible at Portobello bridge and traded our skin for scales. A transfusion of cold blood on Camden Street to allow us swim the dry currents of the boarded up seabed.

The main frame was still intact but the impact must have been extreme.

We swam past shuttered memories, through the silence of these new depths. Tufts of grass like a neck lace of barnacles wrapped tight around the roots of a bus stop, electronic times tables blinking like night lights on lobster pots.

Peering through Café windows, our eyes unblinking see the stacked chairs and Titanic furniture of places we once called our own.

Our gills exhausted exhaling all this emptiness.

We dive deeper, below

The Aungier Street Shelf.

A school of Brazilian Couriers swarm the entrance of a pizzeria, Pearl Fishers on mountain bikes, thermal sacks like oxygen cylinders, preparing for their ascent to the surface beyond the canals.

Everyone dials seafood now.

Encrustation everywhere, some shops have been claimed forever, become shells, scallop, abalone. And if you held these places to your ear you might just hear the music of your life before.

The city is bruised. I want to hold her close.

My darlin’ Dublin, hollowed out like a seashell I want to put you to my ear now and hear you roar!

Reverse the charges, talk all night, will you take me back?

Can we begin again?