She says to me: wait for that moment. In the torpid dust, ramshackle and holster-full. Hold. My nerves, I say to her, are razed by this neurotic accelerant at approximately 1:57 am every day. I don’t care about the darkness or the regression of the world, warned but on fire. This silence, however, is terrifying. In a bottleshop, the other day, quite congenially to my mood, I realised that regression was a perfectly natural state. In fact, it may be the high water-mark of health. Not regression into stupidity (although something might be said for that, at times, too), but regression into habits of the heart. So I made a suitable purchase and went about my business like an ape in a tutu, a banana dangling just out of reach. At the machine, later that night, I fell on certain keys too hard, ones that might have once held a certain piano luminance. The night decided upon a deeper darkness. And I don’t believe I’ve ever known a happiness quite so bold. Perhaps that time I floated on my back in Kinsale harbour out front of The Bulman. That was about six years ago now. And I have to say I would bookend the period between then and now as a lovely regression. Every day. I go around. From the Bulman till when the birdsong dispels the witching hour.