When Sinead died
I went back
to the songs.
Songs I had not heard
for years,
still carrying that voice –
clear,
wounded,
unafraid.
People called her
a warrior.
But I don’t think
she wanted a fight.
I think she simply
saw things
and could not pretend
she didn’t.
The lies,
the cruelty,
the things everyone agreed
not to mention.
She mentioned them.
And when the world
punished her for it,
she kept speaking
in that strange, fierce voice
that sounded less like anger
than pain
refusing to disguise itself.
Maybe that is why
she belonged so completely
to our generation.
We were called angry too.
We grew up
while certainties loosened –
jobs disappeared,
families changed,
and television taught us
to distrust
our leaders.
We learnt early
that authority
did not always deserve
the name.
So we questioned.
We rolled our eyes.
We turned the music up.
We made jokes
when perhaps
we should have cried.
And somewhere between
the Boomers before us
and the generations
that came after,
we became
the ones in the middle –
not asking
to be noticed,
and noticing everything.
Perhaps we were angry.
But perhaps anger
was only the word
they gave us
for seeing the cracks
and refusing
to call the wall sound.
For wanting something
more honest.
Something fairer.
Something real.
Listening to Sinead now,
knowing there will be
no more songs,
I hear that same thing –
not a warrior
looking for battle,
but a human voice
trying desperately
to tell the truth
before the world
could talk over her.