Quis Separabit. The words hung limp on the flags, unweathered, squared creases intact, on lampposts by the Shearwater Way flats. He’d googled the Latin, peering upwards from the window over the sofa where he’d slept. Who will separate us? Like seriously, did the UDA know their motto was also that of the Order of Saint Patrick? That its origins were spiritual, not political? Aye, right.

     On the kitchen table, the edges on a piece of pepperoni pizza curled upwards. Crushed cans jammed open the swing-bin lid. He grabbed a Redbull, cold from the fridge, swallowed down his resolution and stared at his guitar, propped in the corner. A new song. The old ones were jaded, recycled rhetoric, and stringing flags was disempowering. Unimaginative. He craved broader solidarity. Hope. He yawned. He was tired of sofa-surfing - that’s why he’d signed up. Would people even listen?

     Past Emerson Street, like a kid, he balance-walked the red, white and blue kerbs in his scuffed Vans. A procrastination, but still moving forward, the hard case of the battered Les Paul jerking his wrist. Past the gable wall which dared to declare in paint Please STOP Painting, and past the No Irish Sea Border graffiti on walls that had given up. He preferred originality to slogans. It required more intelligence, but also more vulnerability. This game, his game, was to paint with lyrics.

     The Ebrington site was where the crowds began. The buzz at wooden tables outside the bakery.  Families pushing strollers. Green pac-a-macs and butterfly face paints. Toddlers poking at purple and pink hyacinths under the metal oak tree with messages of reconciliation etched onto its leaves. Once, before his time, this place had been an army base.

     By the Peace Bridge, the carnival thump and rattle filtered on the wind. Brass. Percussion. Overtones of confidently inaudible commentary blared through loudspeakers. Children in shamrock sparkle and plastic hats. Green bows and ribbons. Teens in tri-colour pound shop sunglasses. Guinness hats, rugby hats, hijabs. Booming bass lines and charity buckets. Green. Green. Green. He’d deliberately worn the retro, red Arctic Monkey’s T-shirt.

     The dual-carriageway was a sea of jay-walking. High-viz police shepherding frustrated traffic. In the parade proper, a green-hatted Saint Patrick waved at the crowds, declaring blessings with a raised staff. In his wake, a jetsom of fluorescence. Celtic-decorated inflatable cones and octopuses, schools of fishes held by schools of pupils, sparkling silver with metallic paint. Whistles. Whoops. Everywhere emerald feather scarfs and eye-shadow. Lattes sold on green-chalked blackboards. Sugar coated candy-floss and cappuccino air. And that voice, that light Irish lament of the Cranberries, Linger. Did you have to?

     Glimpsing his destination through the crowds, he inhaled. It wasn’t a cop out, but he ducked into the Guildhall and hovered anonymously, grinding his teeth, fixing a shoelace. And what if he didn’t show? His mouth felt dry. Bathrooms. A water-fountain. He lugged himself and the guitar upstairs. Deep Breaths. Think. Yes or no? His eyes were drawn to the glass cabinet across the corridor. Nobel Prize? He’d heard of it. Knew the name, Hume, but little beyond. The medal was there, a coined disc, on a glass cylinder. Behind it, the certificate of all certificates for peace-making, flanked by two other awards. Trans-continental. On the right, Martin Luther King. To the left, the brass plaque of the Gandhi Peace Prize. Hume had walked this city. These streets. He’d had something to say. And those words on the scroll, red font, under the Hindi, fearless perseverance… That, felt relevant. That, he wanted. That, more than Quis Separabit was a motto worth living. Reading the information panel, he blinked. Housing. Hume too had begun with that.

     He touched his finger-tips, tough-skinned from wire strings, to the glass. Imagined a transmission of spirit. An energy, fizzing. Just a start, that’s all. A stand, at seventeen, that counted for something. Something syncopated, off-beat.

     From wooden pavilions across Guildhall Square, floated the keening of pipes. He cleared his throat, calmer. Volunteering had been a spur of the moment thing. Not the volunteering implied over those pizzas, pints and protocol grand-standing. For that, he didn’t care. The 24-hour busk for homelessness, he did. Enough to add his voice.

     Guitar case out front, the sound crew gave him the nod.  He wouldn’t sing trad. Nor Cranberries. Not even Arctic Monkeys. Today, for the first time, he’d sing his own song.