Online Poetry Publication - Arts Office Kilkenny County Council
I keep them safe inside me mind, locked up very tight. They hum and haw incessantly. Restlessly. But I – I say nothing. The walls, they grow in width and height, hidden deep inside this prison in my mind. But I – I’m captured too. I feel them claw their needle-sharp nails against my inner […]
I worked so hard to create an us that I lost myself in the process. I know it’s a cliché, but that doesn’t make it less true. After all, everything was a cliché with us, from the first cheesy chat-up line. Like every good whirlwind romance we went up like flames and came down in […]
He tells himself a story: “I am great. I am wise.” There will be truth in that story. What though, it’s only lies. He listens to his story: “You are great. You are wise.” And he believes his telling. What though, it’s only lies. He walks his way through living: Thinking “great”, thinking “wise”; Taking […]
“I can’t face it,” you say. I stand quiet, don’t want to wound you when you’re already bleeding. But your words are shards, the barbed wire I’m clinging to to keep from going under. Because this pain, this sadness, it’s so much better than the dark: the eternal abyss where no light reaches. So yes. […]
He shuffled along the pavement like dead leaves in the wind, always carrying a third support. Mr. Crestfallen’s sombre eyes drooped into heavy bags, almost reaching the network of spider veins crawling, multiplying as freely through his sickly pale jowls as the cells in his lungs. His spine arched; leathered back beginning to recover from […]
They loom in and out of sight with eerie speed, like ghosts of places left behind. Pale and colourless against the dark, silhouettes of light flashing out of view as soon as seen. They are paper cut-outs, limiting the world to an ever-changing, never-changing sphere of depthless shape.
I dragged the match across the sandpaper coarse side of the box. Splintered sparks scattered outwards with a flare of life. An amber corona swaddled the match tip and the scent of sulfur coated my nose. I tipped the match gently against a ragged wick. The fire caught, throwing a white flame upwards. It waltzed […]
Looking back, everything seemed so infinite, though I had no understanding of the word. It was me – yes, I had family that cared, friends that would make fun; but in that one moment, it was just me. Running wild, monsters roaming free: “I’ve got to run! Run or they’ll catch me!” Racing down paths […]
The first thing I learned about holding someone’s hand is that it was a restriction. When they gripped my fingers so tight I thought they’d fall off. I knew I couldn’t pick and choose where I wanted to go. I was stuck, quite firmly, by their side. I hated having to hold their hand. The […]