Everyone talks about the troubles; they tell me they can tell which side you’re on just by looking. I’m looking at nobody, blowing into my horn, I’m a minstrel boy, playing for the girls to dance and the boys to watch. I don’t hear the bang, Steve’s rimshots must have drowned the sound. The flames burn out in five minutes, ceramic tiles and wrought steel stairway. The smell of soot and propellant lingers, fusing with the fuel that ignited in someone’s mind, making them want a couple of hundred kids to burn to death over an apostrophe in their surname.
Joe Reynolds is an amateur musician, poet, and writer. He is 75 years old and lives in the UK.