Words to Tie to Bricks (3 page)

A
NNA
M
ULLIGAN

Don’t break her; bend her.

Twist her mind back like a finger

And when she begins to drain of colour

Take away her light – slowly,

Like cutting hair – in increments,

Just a little at a time, so one day

She will look in the mirror

And not know herself

Without you.

Don’t let her snap – be careful.

Tears are sloppy; keep it to broken sleep.

Limit your effects to restlessness

And self-doubt. Let her see things;

She will lie to herself

For you.

Don’t let her starve – feed her

With controlled portions of affection,

Little things:

Careless gestures, hands on hands,

Meaningless glances.

She will use them

To forgive you.

You must never let her see more

Than she can deny to herself

When she tosses

In the night.

S
AMUEL
H. D
OYLE

One door remained

To be breached.

I lunged for it

The lock shattering

into diamonds and prisms

of enchanting rainbows,

a spectrum unchecked.

I stepped through.

A fantastic gravity pulling

My leaden legs

To the edge.

Some deadly desire forcing my footsteps.

I hung above a crystal precipice,

Crevasses promised

A blissful fall.

I dived off.

My arms opened

Wide like a boiling ocean

Of emeralds and sapphires.

I plunged deeper

Through swirling fogs

Of lavender

Shrouding the treacherous lows.

I unfurled my wings

And flew.

A
MY
C
AMPBELL

I
T IS THREE O
’
CLOCK IN
the morning when I get the call. I pick up on the third ring, like I always do, although we both
know I was waiting by the phone. ‘Where are you?’ I ask; no need for pleasantries. You and I have danced to this music for so long now that I move on autopilot, stepping in time to a
song that only we can hear.

‘Outside,’ you choke, and although I register the tears in your voice, I don’t question them, because I lost my curiosity a long time ago.

I open the door, even though I don’t want to, and you fall into the dimly lit hallway that used to be called ours. As soon as I flick the switch on the lamp, I regret it; the light lifts
the shadows from your face and illuminates bruises, scars and tears that I don’t want to see.

There is a fresh cut on your temple, and if you notice the blood running down your cheek, you don’t show it. You drop the empty bottle to the ground, and I flinch as it shatters on the
wooden floor. I busy myself cleaning the wound on your head and sweeping away the shards of broken glass because it is easier than looking into your empty eyes.

I lead you to the bedroom, as has become routine. You never comment on the blanket that has taken up permanent residence on the armchair and the untouched sheets in our bedroom, never ask why I
leave a perfectly good double bed empty every night you’re not here. Maybe you know that it is too painful for me to sleep in our space without you. Maybe you just don’t notice. You
slide between the sheets of the bed that used to be ours but isn’t even mine anymore, like nothing has changed.

I don’t know how you do it. You act as if the last year never happened and although I wish more than anything that it hadn’t, I can’t. I can’t wake up here with you and
find it had been nothing more than a bad dream like you always used to complain of. So I don’t speak. Neither do you.

You pull me in like you do every time and although I resist at first, we both know where this is heading. We fall onto our usual sides of the bed, me in a pencil skirt, blouse and blazer from
work, you in old jeans, a torn t-shirt and a familiar leather jacket that smells like cigarette smoke and alcohol and your cologne. It is so painfully similar, yet nothing is the same. I know that
in the morning I will watch you sneaking out, gathering your clothes from the floor and trying not to wake me. I will pretend to sleep. It’s just easier that way.

When I go downstairs I will be able to smell the coffee and see the cup in the sink. You will have taken two of the aspirin that I have started to leave out for you, like a child laying out
cookies and milk for Santa Claus. And come night time, you will greet me again with a phone call or a knock on the door and I will get you, wherever you are, and allow you to fall into my arms and
pull me into what was once our sanctuary. It might not be tomorrow; I’m never quite sure when it will be. Do you know that I don’t go out anymore for fear you’ll call and
I’ll miss it?

I sit in my chair although yours is bigger, watching the phone, willing it to ring and wishing that it wouldn’t. I fall asleep there on the nights that you don’t call. It’s the
same old game as always, me taking care of you. I was happy like that; I could have done it forever. You were the one who walked away. You were gone with nothing more than a brief ‘it’s
not working’, a rough apology and a pre-packed suitcase.

I knew the first time you slammed the door that you would be back. And I knew the first time the phone rang at three a.m. that you would never fully leave. You would reach for me night after
night, and I would reach back, driving to wherever you were two or three times a week, if that was what you needed. Because you never stopped needing me, the same way I never stopped loving
you.

When I wake up to the familiar empty bed, I do not feel anything. It is not the first time, nor will it be the last, because you can’t stop coming back to a broken us any
more than I can stop welcoming a broken you back into a defeated embrace.

C
AELEN
F
ELLER

Out of sight,

Out of comfort,

Bobbing in the sea.

The waves here are gentle,

But their nature is to engulf.

This water is deep,

Enriched by the lives of all creation,

Their history runs in every current.

Yet none have dived deep enough

To see this ocean’s floor.

Sinking here is easy.

There are many currents,

Unseen, that clutch at me.

They pull me down, deeper.

Others float and sink.

Caught up in these waves,

They never think to struggle.

Yet simply are pulled along,

And eventually,

The water will drag them down.

When I dive,

And the currents take me,

I see such depths.

Before the breath I took

To sustain me runs out,

I see another world.

The blood of all history runs here,

Diluted in the water.

I swim through it all,

And still continue.

But when the air runs out

And water takes its place,

I always float back to the surface.

Bobbing in the water again.

S
EAN
C
ERONI

There is nothing more sinister

Than a comfortable prison.

G
RACE
C
OLLINS

Y
ELLOW IS HOW A YOUNG
boy feels on his first day, in a new place where dreams come true. It’s that hopeful giddiness that forces its way into your
brain, taking up all your thoughts. It can be comforting, like when you run a bath at the perfect temperature and you lower yourself into it and allow your mind to wander over people you say you
don’t care for but deep down they mean the most to you.

It’s not awkward small talk and pretending that you weren’t just staring at a certain someone. It’s easy conversation and hearing lovely people laugh at things that
aren’t that funny. It’s your first kiss that you then ran away from and have been embarrassed about ever since. It’s the fragile, flirty, nervous, silly relationship you have with
someone before you label it and crush what the two of you once shared.

It’s knowing that there is someone who for some strange reason still cares for you and is worried about you and realises that there is something wrong although you won’t admit it,
not even to yourself. It’s being cared about. It’s seeing that after all you have done you still have someone there.

It’s getting a hug that’s warm and smells good and lasts just a little bit too long. And finding that perfect place for your hands around someone’s neck when they hold you.
It’s horrible dancing to really bad music but not caring who’s watching. And it’s doing cartwheels in the rain just because you can.

It’s getting a letter you never expected, with that same old messy scrawl that labels the front of a book as being important to you because a wonderful person took time to write it for
you. It’s saying goodbye to a place where you have had so many good memories, not because you have to, but because you have finally come to peace with saying goodbye. It’s seeing that
everything that you’ve ever wanted wasn’t actually for you and you were only working towards it and saying it because it fits the mould of what people want for you.

Yellow is having conversations planned in your head only to have the other participant not follow the script in the best way possible. Yellow is giving the perfect gift to someone on their
birthday. And knowing that somewhere, you’re crossing someone’s mind right now.

Yellow is rereading your favourite parts of books and taking the last sip of tea from a cup: savouring its taste and letting it warm you from the inside out. It’s listening to an album
from start to finish and not realising that there’s no more music flooding your ears. It’s waking up in the middle of the night and watching the moon, wondering who else is up.

It can be sad, it can be going for a walk in the dark and then calling a friend from a random phone booth to ask them to come pick you up, only to cry when they get there. It can be fake and
phony and putting up a brave front. And sometimes you need that front because it’ll help you to know what the dream is like and it makes you want it more.