D2 :: Sáoírse "Bruiser" Ó Dálaigh // [resub]

I want you to be happy
Free to run, get dizzy on caffeine

If the girl was trying to say anything in particular, she forgot what it was at least five minutes ago, but hasn't stopped talking yet. Her uncle hasn't dropped by the house to check in on them since last month — maybe disappearing on a drinking bender or gambling until he got dropped out in the country without his shoes, left to hoof it barefoot back to town. Who knows. Even if she paused her rambling, he wouldn't say. He never does.

Fly
Feel your mother at your side

The important thing is that he brought food and she's shoveling it into her mouth without pausing to swallow or breathe or say thank you. If she stops for even a moment then surely one of the overgrown rats lurking in the shadows will leap up and steal the unfinished bits right out from between her fingers. Sáoírse wouldn't even have time to punch it in the face. Everything moves too quickly here.

You'll be happy all the time
I know you can make it right

It doesn't seem like anything ever happens, but one day you're a little girl and the next day you've got all these awkward limbs to deal with. One day you've got a father and another day you don't. One day you live in a shabby, but well kept house and then you blink and there's a stack of old newspapers piling up on the porch, blink and there's half a year of empty egg boxes stacked in the kitchen, blink and you don't know where the living room went because it's full of old baby clothes and Da's shoes — even though Da doesn't need shoes because Da is gone — and a decade of garbage that is precious and must be kept because something touched Da once or touched something he touched or touched something that touched something that touched something that...

Cause I know you'll feel the ghost
Of some memories so warm

Everything is precious even though everything is garbage.

Funny friends that make you laugh
And maybe you're just a little bit dappy

People call Sáoírse and her family garbage sometimes and it's easy to bare her teeth and grin when she hears it, even if it's the kind of grin that comes before snapping her jaws at them — as if she's just as feral as everyone fears. In her home garbage is precious and no one throws it out because when someone tries her mother cries like her soul is crawling out of her mouth and into her children's lap. Quivering. Tormented. No one has tried for years except the possums and that's only because they're greedy bastards who want the treasure for themselves.

Don't you know you got my eyes
I'll make you fly

Life has become a phenomenon where everything feels normal. Their mother's hoarding, Niámh's pet wild possums, Érskíne living in the backyard, Aislín getting lost in their own home, and Sáoírse testing the boundaries to find out what too far actually is. Nothing she says or does seems to raise a red flag. In her gut she knows too far is a myth or, at least, it is the sun and she will burn if she tries to touch it.