Philadelphia Weekly

It's amazing how fast you can go from being upright to flat on your back. How once you're lying there you have no memory of the fall, no visual of a world in motion.

One minute you're moving along, making what seems like progress, and then-bam!-another plane of reality slams into you so hard it jostles your bones.

When R. went off to work that morning I knew I couldn't be there when he got home. So I came out from under the covers where I was hiding and started cramming all my stuff into my big backpack. Then I tossed the key he'd cut for me onto his pillow, a melodramatic gesture of finality I hoped would tear at him, and left, lugging my bag down his road to the junction of the ugly main street for the last time.

At the bus stop I glared into oncoming traffic and tried not to cry. The little home I'd made with R. had been only vapors that drifted away overnight, and I couldn't decide which was sadder: the fact that it was over, or the idea that maybe it had never been real to begin with.

Standing there I realized something else: I don't want to go home.

Dublin is always gray and usually smelly, and every few days I have to listen to an angry, drink-fueled rant about American foreign policy. I have no school to go to here anymore, no place to live and no boyfriend to laze around with in a drifty love haze. But for some reason I can't go home. I just. Can't.

>So instead I took a bus to the other coast, then sat on a ferry for a couple more hours. Which is how I ended up on Inis Mor, a strange, tiny island that I'm exploring on a rented bike.

It's a peaceful but slightly eerie journey, the endless ocean on one side and low stone walls snaking through the fields on the other. Above me clouds scuttle along at a pretty good clip in the wind.

I pull my itchy hat down lower on my forehead as if to hide.

I got off the ferry with a few other people, but they live here. I heard them talking to each other in the soft shushing sounds of their impossible language.

The only other visitors are a squadron of Chinese students on bikes who've just appeared from behind a rocky hill. And since I'm not in what you'd call a making-friends kind of mood, I speed up, pedaling like it's a punishment into the wind and rain-spittle.

When I come to a brown cow on the side of the road tugging up grass with her teeth, I stop to straddle my bike and admire her serenity. A small dog runs up from nowhere with a black stick in its mouth. I toss it a few times.

Then a little boy, who doesn't seem to be the dog's owner, comes up the road too. He gives me an abbreviated, solemn nod, the kind I've only ever seen old men do, before stopping to admire me and what might look like my serenity but most certainly isn't. The four of us meeting on this lonely road constitutes a relatively large gathering.

"Ya lookin' for dun owgsa?" the boy asks me.

I nod, having no idea what he's talking about.

"Well it's just along there."

"Thanks. What do you have there?" I point to the plastic toy he's holding.

"It's ... you know, an alien saucer." Naturally.