BELFAST

Yes, it emerged here on the streets of Belfast. Innocence, mine was about to be lost. It came by way of two children. And it was their smile, their youth, the exuberance, the joy. Held in a moment inside their bright blue eyes. In the opposite direction was an elderly man, shoulders narrowed from the weight of his life as he carried his invisible yoke with him up the delving road. He took me on life’s journey of sorrow that day, and I left my youth cutting the string to my own life. I’d like to go back to that place now, almost thirty years later, to that place where I traded my past for my present.