A Man I Met In The Art Gallery Where I Supposedly Work

If I don’t take a break every now and then and talk to someone

I’ll die

that’s what he said

short stumpy nervously scraping

the scalp under his baseball cap at regular

intervals

tabloid rag rolled up into the breast

of his jacket like a spare limb a crutch a weapon

a page 3 tit

peeking

out at me like a winking blind

man with an infection

me fuckin social worker Rob - I call him nob-head like -

tried to teach me how to use a fucking

diary fucking gobshite fucking silver spoon

21 year old shitbag

he said

21 fresh out of daddys wallet he can fuck off the cunt

I nod. he probably is a cunt.

and then doctor nob-head - he’s even fucking worse

you wanna talk about cunts - he was doctor cunt

that one right gobshite gave me a fucking notebook

to write down all me fucking fears and fanny-feelings in fuck off

doctor cunt - posh as anything he was - and a right nob-head

I tells him

IM NOT PUTTING NONE OF THAT FUCKING SHIT IN A BOOK FOR YOU TO HAVE A GOOD CHUCKLE

AT WHILST YOU'RE TAKIN A SHIT

I nod. Doctor cunt sounds like the type of person to do that.

He pulls his cap off.

A long deep canyon of a scar runs from his eyebrow to his scalp.

See this part of the ‘ead ‘ere love? He points at it. cold cold cold.

That’s where me brain popped there, love.

Oh, I say.

He’s whispering. The conversation feels illicit.

How did you pop your brain?

Don’t know. Doctor said it just happens. But see ‘ere, girl? He points

at it again. cold cold cold.

That’s the part of the brain that handles identity. Fucked, aint I?

I nod. I suppose he is.

Y’see girl, I’d like to write down me whole life story. I can tell yer what happened

when I was 4 and me mam left me in a trolley outside the supermarket, or when I was 8 and the nuns caned me hand so ‘ard that I bled all over me biro, but I couldn’t tell yer about me wedding day or where I went yesterdee mornin’, you understand.

I nod. I guess. I once got so drunk that I forgot an entire year.

Plus, I haven’t got the patience to write more than a page. Doctor cunt says thats a good thing. He says if I had more patience I’d probably want to do more and doing more might kill me huuhuuherrrr.

Fuck. Why don’t you write it as a haiku?

A haiku? Bloody hell love, I had a brain hemorrhage, not a cold.

He leaves.

I get back to work. Whatever that entails.