I first saw her on a wet Tuesday morning at Pearse Station, the kind of morning where Dublin looks like it has been dipped in grey paint and left to dry badly. I was twenty-six, working in an office near Grand Canal Dock, and I had perfected the art of being invisible. Hood up, headphones in, coffee in hand, saying sorry to people who bumped into me first.
She stood on the platform with a yellow umbrella and a paperback folded in one hand. That was what I noticed first, not her face but the fact that she was reading in the rain as if the weather had no authority over her. The book was getting speckled with water, and she didn’t seem to care. When the train arrived, she closed it gently, like she was putting a child to sleep.
After that, I saw her most mornings. Not every day, but enough that my week began to organise itself around the chance of her appearing. She wore a green coat in winter and white runners even when the paths were filthy. She got off at Tara Street and walked towards Trinity College, always quickly, always with that same paperback or another one. I invented harmless little stories about her. She was a student, maybe. Or a librarian. Or someone who worked in a gallery and knew how to stand quietly in front of paintings without pretending to understand them.
I never spoke to her. That is the ridiculous part, the part that makes people laugh when I tell it now, though I don’t blame them. It sounds dramatic to say I loved someone who never even knew my name, but that was exactly how it felt at the time. It wasn’t the love of shared bills, bad habits, Sunday dinners, or arguments about heating. It was the love of possibility. She became the person I imagined I could be brave for.
My life then was very small. I had moved to Dublin from Mayo after a breakup that had left me quieter than I already was. I lived in a box room in Drumcondra with a window that faced a wall. My job was fine in the way a chair is fine if it doesn’t collapse beneath you. I went for pints with colleagues in places like Kehoe’s and nodded along to conversations, but most evenings I returned home feeling like I had been translated badly into myself.
Seeing her became a private ritual. If she was on the platform, the day had a better chance. If she wasn’t, I told myself I didn’t care, then spent the journey checking every reflection in the window. Once, the train lurched, and she dropped her book. It slid near my shoe. I picked it up and handed it to her. She smiled and said, “Thanks.” One word. I carried it around for weeks like a medal.
There were chances, of course. Real chances. One evening I saw her outside the IFI in Temple Bar, laughing with two friends, her hair pinned up, looking more real than she ever did on the platform. I stood across the street pretending to check my phone until they disappeared. Another time, she was in a queue ahead of me at a café near Dawson Street. The barista asked for her name and she said, “Mara.” I remember feeling shocked, as if she had been keeping it from me personally. Mara. A name I could finally attach to all that imagining.
I promised myself I would talk to her the next time. Not confess anything mad. Just say I recognised her from the train. Ask what she was reading. Be normal, which felt like asking myself to fly.
The next time came in late March. Dublin had one of those bright mornings that tricks everyone into forgiving it. She was on the platform without the yellow umbrella, reading again. I stood three feet away, rehearsing a sentence so intensely I missed the train announcement. My heart was thumping like I had done something wrong.
When the train pulled in, a man rushed past and knocked her bag from her shoulder. Books, keys, a lipstick, and a little packet of tissues spilled across the wet platform. Before I could move, two people bent down to help her. I froze. I actually froze. By the time I crouched, there was only one thing left near my foot, a small photograph that must have slipped from her purse.
It showed her beside a hospital bed, holding the hand of an older woman with the same eyes. On the back, in blue pen, someone had written, “Mam and Mara,
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
