Where it Counts.
by Seamus Scanlon
In school he was brave,
bombastic,
hyperkinetic.
He was Mensa material.
He soaked up quadratic equations,
recoil free fractions,
prime numbers.
He wore an ankle bracelet.
He had blue green eyes.
He had high cheek bones.
A girl magnet.
A boot boy target.
Their steel toe capped boots never landed.
He was a balletic street fighting king.
He laid them down on the wet Galway streets.
He delivered round house kicks.
He slashed cheeks.
He broke femurs.
He was a black eagle falling
through a flock of doves slicing
open their white breasts.
He broke girl’s hearts.
They trashed around him
like fish breathing their last
in the bottom of a currach.
They scooped up his body.
Their pale white Irish skins
vibrating with untold sins.
They swopped bracelets.
They swopped breaths.
Noon on a long summer evening in August.
On a dare he walks across the roof of McCambridge’s in Shop Street.
In slow motion, begins slowly to slide down the blue slate roof tiles.
Slick from the soft evening mist spreading in from the Corrib.
He tries to get purchase.
All stare up at him,
Shielding their eyes from the strong glare of the sun.
His pelvis shatters.
The noise incredible.
Leg bones pancaked.
Ragged white stem of a femur
Jutting through his beautiful skin.
Surgeons work for days.
His recovery is slow.
For the rest of the Summer
I stay beside his bed in Merlin Park.
Visitors look askance.
I nod—the Galway bear hug.
He cries on the long nights.
Beside him I cry myself.
But inside, where it counts.
Photograph by Seamus Scanlon
Seamus Scanlon is an Irish writer who is interested in writing about childhood trauma and the ambivalence of the Irish towards violence. He is a fellow of McDowell Fellow and The Center for Fiction. Recent achievements: full production of The McGowan Trilogy in Ireland (May 2025) (previous productions include New York, Ireland, the UK and Japan); poetry and flash fiction in Frazzled Lit (2025); The 2025 Fish Anthology; The 2024 Bath Flash Fiction Anthology and Gemini Magazine (2025).