The sweatmark on his teeshirt that day
made a map of Ireland, not the map
you’d see in a current atlas, but one
like the ur-map that hung on his wall
at home – where it never got this hot,
not in a hundred years. He wiped
his leaking brow with his half-sleeve
and held the base of the teeshirt out
to look at the sweatmark again.
It was Ireland, all right, even seen
upside down. His own county,
Donegal, was over his right nipple.
Kerry kicked towards the liver
while Dublin was nowhere at all.
He sleeked down his warm hair
with his fingers. What did this mean,
if anything? He got sweatmarks
all these days, but never a map before.
Was it a signal calling him back?
Why else was the teeshirt only marked
in that spot, unlike every other time?
He wondered should he phone home.
Then that voice in his head he hated
told him to take the teeshirt off
and shove it in the laundry basket.
If it really was a map and a sign
it would survive the launderette –
which it didn’t, not that that proved
anything, he afterwards thought.
But that sweatmark never reappeared.