Jane Kirwan
Making Space
If I hadn’t left that day, walked away
she’d never have named me: two-faced, stolen child
I’d not know
pretending to be loving
was okay, like accommodating hate, need
and the abyss I claimed I would feel
less than the absence I now describe
as you clear the barn: tiles, cupboard, rusty scythe
jaw of a weasel
pile them in the yard.
A spider skims the rim of your white mug
runs a thread from the rafter
incorporating dust as it scurries back
to a broken beam, abandoned egg
The minute you drink another web fractured.
Jane Kirwan lives in Prague. Two collections, Stealing the Eiffel Tower (1997) and The Man Who Sold Mirrors (2003), have been published by Rockingham.
Page(s) 50
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