Unscrubbable.

A good man, out of Derry, a childhood roughshod and ransacked, searched and chased, now wine dining on a hill in the country. Two loops, two journeys converging, side by side, knife to fork, elbows creaking on a grandmother's table. It's moved 17 metres in 65 years, a nargun of the scullery. The texture of our lives, the ruts, the bumps, scars and tracings...these sediments are the story-strata that become our fossil record. A vellum overlay would reveal contours echoing, darker overlaps, the deviations fading. We're all the same at this scrubbed table, story-soaked and worry-worn. Underneath, my thumb runs silent over the familiar knots, tracing grain, remembering, not finding youth.