Checkpoint Backpacks cinched around our innocence, we take the bus to Belfast City. We want the excitement heavy on our shoulders: for tourists it's all in the balance. We walk all day past Queen's, down Castle Street and Donegall; or greenly in the sun, sleep; ignore the plastic packaging on City Hall; the workmen, behind Victoria's chubby, granite, satisfied butt, re-building re-building that Queen again. Again. We carry the city on our tourist-shoulders and we keep the balance. At checkpoints we move from gun to guilt. I think, it is my own. I only wanted enough excitement to balance my bedroll. Not this silence; this patient history held in amber; held in these young soldiers' eyes. Sharon Kourous |