P.A. Lynch is a writer based in Galway. Their work explores place, memory, and interior states, often focusing on moments of quiet encounter and emotional attentiveness. They are interested in how inner landscapes intersect with physical environments, and how this shapes experiences of belonging and connection. Their writing attends closely to the textures of everyday life, with an emphasis on stillness, presence, and emotional nuance, particularly within familiar places and ordinary moments.
On the Edge of the Canal
By P.A. Lynch
A young woman sits on the edge of the canal. She has walked alongside it from an early age—to school, to university. With past lovers, friends, and alone. She knows the sound of it in every season. She knows which stretch goes quiet at what hour.
The sun has just set. The cloudless sky is deep blue and purple, reflected in the canal.
She ties her hair back. The band on her wrist snaps. “Fuck it.” She digs in her bag, finds the blue rubber band from the coffee at her mother’s, uses that instead.
The crack of the lid. She drinks—the first time in several years. Swallows. Places the bottle on the concrete edge with a light thud.
Her parents were always on edge when she was near water as a child.
Sally wraps her arms around her knees, a sensation spreading outwards from her chest—down along her arms, legs, fingers, toes.
She listens to ambient music through wired earbuds that don’t seal out the world entirely. She has always liked it that way—the music and the sound of the surrounding world bleeding into one another.
“Mmmmm…”
The street lamps switch on, a candle-warm glow.
She notices a tall young man approaching—she has seen him here before, once or twice. He walks like someone with somewhere to be, or nowhere at all. There was one occasion when they passed each other on the path and he nodded—a small, unhurried nod, as if he had all the time in the world for it.
The young man comes closer, then sits on the opposite side of the canal, a few feet up towards the bridge. He opens a drawing pad and sets it across his knee.
Her face warms. He might be looking in her direction—she doesn’t dare check. She takes a slow breath and looks back at the water.
She pulls out her denim tobacco pouch, makes a rollie.
The paper crinkles. The lighter sparks. She inhales, releases a slow cloud of smoke. It dissolves into the spring air.
“Excuse me?”
Sally startles. The young man is leaning in her direction.
She pulls out one of her earbuds.
“Do you happen to know the time?”
Sally blinks.
“Oh, yes… Yes, of course!” She checks her phone. “It’s ten past seven.”
He nods. “March 20th, right?”
Their eyes meet.
“Yeah.”
He gives her a little smile.
“Thank you,” he says, before returning to his drawing.
Sally’s heart pounds. Her jaw tightens.
She pulls from her rollie. It’s gone out. After relighting, she takes a drag.
She considers replacing the earbud.
Doesn’t.
The young man glances in her direction for a few seconds, notes the dangling earbud, then turns his head up towards the sky.
“Quarter moon tonight,” he says, looking up.
“Hm,” says Sally.
Music blasts from a car on a nearby street. She watches it cross the bridge by the old lock keeper’s house, then disappear.
Her glasses slip down her nose as her head bows. She pushes them back into place.
“What were you listening to, before I interrupted?” he asks. His pencil scratches and caresses the paper.
“Oh!” says Sally. “It’s, ah… Some ambient. Stars of the Lid. I doubt you’ve heard of them.”
The pencil pauses. “Heard the name,” he says. “Never listened to them properly.”
“Oh,” says Sally. “You should. I mean—if you like that kind of music.”
“I’m James, by the way.”
“Sally.”
The water gushes where it drops down into the chamber beneath the bridge by the sea lock, calming as it flows towards them. She has heard that sound so many times it has become part of her—part of whatever it is she means when she thinks of home.
“I like instrumental when I’m drawing,” says James. “Words get in the way.”
He rests his hand against the centre of his chest, then lets it fall.
“I’m the same,” she says.
He meets her eyes. She looks away.
“Mmmmm…” he says.
The water streams past, steady. The lighter turns between her fingers and thumb. On the far side, James has gone back to his drawing. She watches the pencil move without being able to see what it makes.
A pair of joggers go panting by on the path. Sally watches them pass before taking another slug from her bottle.
She glances at James. He is tapping out a slow rhythm on his thighs. Left, right—left, left, right. He looks up towards her and again she adjusts her gaze, this time down to her hands.
She closes her eyes. The water rushes past. She feels it through the ground, through the air.
She opens her eyes. James—his hand against the centre of his chest.
“Do you mind if I ask…” says Sally. “Is there a reason that you…” she places her hand on her chest. “Is there a reason that you do this?”
James closes his drawing pad.
“Yeah. It’s a way to remind myself that I’m here.” He pauses. “Here, with myself.”
Her breath becomes shallower.
“With myself…” she says, trailing off.
He waits. She doesn’t continue.
Silence.
“It’s my birthday today,” Sally says.
Her head falls towards her chest.
“Really?” James says. “Happy Birthday.”
Sally smiles. “Thank you.”
“I’ve been having a tough few weeks,” says Sally. “So…”
She lifts and shakes the half-empty bottle of wine.
“Well…” says James. “If you’d like to talk about anything, I’m all ears.”
She readjusts her posture, opening towards him. Her rollie burns and crackles.
“My mother has been ill the last few months,” says Sally. “She’s in hospital at the moment, and yeah…”
She holds the smoke within herself for longer than usual.
“It’s not looking good.”
James sighs, leaning back, both hands behind his head.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That’s—yeah. That’s a lot.”
There is a small stumble in it that he doesn’t cover. Sally notices and finds, to her surprise, that she likes him better for it.
“I’m not handling it all so well,” says Sally. “Which is to be expected, I know…”
She fidgets.
“I just… I just don’t feel safe… Being in this body, in this experience,” says Sally, gesturing first at herself, then the air around her.
The wine sloshes around the bottle.
“Do you know that feeling?”
James nods. “I do, yeah.” He looks at the water. “I’ve spent a lot of time not feeling it and then a lot of time feeling it too much. I don’t think there’s a quick way through.”
She studies him. He is propping his head up with his hand.
“You seem very together,” says Sally. “I suppose I’m surprised you can relate.”
He almost laughs. It doesn’t quite make it.
“Looks can be deceiving,” he says. He sets the pencil down. “This train derails plenty.”
She looks at him.
“My mother died when I was quite young,” says James.
He pauses.
“The thing I remember most clearly is her energy. Just this warm, loving presence.” The slightest smile. “My mother…”
His voice falls away into the sound of the rushing water.
“I’m so sorry.”
James shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.”
He places both hands together and squeezes.
“Is your father still around?” Sally asks.
“He is yeah…” says James, with a small, unreadable smile. “That’s a story for another day.”
She doesn’t push it.
“Do you want a drink?” she says, raising the bottle.
“I thought you’d never ask!” James laughs, sitting up straight.
“Let’s meet at the bridge,” she says.
“Let’s.”
Sally tucks her lighter into the denim tobacco pouch. She rises, wobbles slightly, steadies herself.
With the half-empty bottle cradled in her arms, she trudges along the side of the canal, against the current. The night air is cooler now. The wall to her right is covered with street art. She passes a giant blue ghost with R.I.P. written across its middle.
On the far side, James is moving too.
She reaches the bridge first. The railing is cold through her sleeve. She stands there a moment, the bottle against her chest, before she sees him coming. He raises a hand. She raises the bottle.
“Hi,” he says, reaching out. Sally shifts the bottle into her left hand. “Hello.” Their hands meet with care, lingering for a moment before releasing.
She presents him the bottle.
“Ahhhh…” says James, opening his hands. “Would you like to see some ID, or…?”
Sally laughs.
“Nah, you’re all good. Just drink up.”
“Thank you.”
Sally passes him the bottle. She rests her palms against the cold metal railings, pulls the sleeve of her jumper down over her hands against the chill of them. She leans towards the water beneath, eyes closed for a moment.
She gazes down the length of the canal, towards the ocean.
The sky has grown darker, though an orange glow clings to the west.
“You can still see the Burren,” says Sally, pointing towards the silhouetted shapes on the horizon.
“Have you been there?”
“Yeah,” says James, handing back the bottle and leaning beside her.
“It’s one of my favourite places,” says Sally. “Something about all that limestone. Like the world before the world.”
They stand like that for a while. Somewhere in the dark a bird calls once and goes quiet. James takes a drink and passes the bottle back without a word.
Dusk slips away.
“You’ve had a rough few months.”
The bottle is not far from emptiness now.
“Yeah…”
She takes a small drink, then returns it to him.
“I guess I have.”
She stares out at the dark shape of the Burren against the last of the light. The expanse of it.
“We used to eat Tayto sandwiches when we reached the top of the mountain.”
She lets out a small breath that is almost a laugh.
“I keep thinking stuff like that. Of all the small things.”
James doesn’t say anything. He nods, slowly, the way you nod at something you have heard properly.
“I can’t save her,” says Sally.
The words come out before she can stop them. She waits for the shame that usually follows. It doesn’t arrive. Something else comes instead. A loosening.
James says nothing. He watches the same horizon.
After a while he exhales slowly. The sound of it mingles with the water below them.
She becomes aware again of the canal moving beneath them—steady, indifferent, continuous. It moved like this when she was a child walking home from school along its bank. It will move like this long after they leave.
Tears stream down her face.
“Do you like the taste of tears?”
James laughs. “Salty, right?”
A teardrop gathers at the base of her chin before falling into the canal below.
It merges with the water—flowing along the canal chamber, past the old lock keeper’s house, on and on to the river, out and into the ocean.
The Galway Review 