Séimí Mac Aindreasa is from the Shaws Road Gaeltacht in Belfast. His stories have been published in three anthologies and online . Consider the floor.
The floor is an amazing thing. Unassuming and flat, it nevertheless commands enough respect that walls and roof are required to cover and protect it. We decorate it with fancy tiles; we smother it in shiny linoleum; we bedeck it with expensive rugs.
We brush and wash it as if it were a prize stallion. We worry about it being kept clean – so clean in fact, that we would, in certain circumstances, eat our meals off it. And then we walk all over it.
We inflict a lot of punishment on our floors. When we are amazed, our jaws hit it; when we speed up, we hit it; when we beat someone in a fight, we wipe it with them. The floor in our home was amazing.
When I was a mere child, graduating from babe-in-arms to toddler-into-everything, I remember – and I really do remember – lying on the floor, fat cheek resting against fairly hideous lino, enjoying the heat. The floor was heated from below, a relative rarity in those days and a feature no longer active in the house. But back then, I would just lie there, with my face pressed to it, my little hands stretched palms down, feeling the warmth soak up through my body.
Tiny flecks of dust would rise and fall with my breathing, spiralling away with each relaxed exhale on their journey across the vast room. Vast from my perspective, anyway. The slightly musty, dusty smell would tickle m.