Linda went missing after she moved in with Patrick.
Her loud cackles over a bottle of wine
are now designated to
muted sporadic
five minute phone calls.
The night before the wedding
she asked if she was making a mistake
and when I told her yes
she resented me for my honesty.
We buried Gillian when we were 21.
A man followed her home from work
and she didn’t even have a chance to think no.
When I meet her, it is always by chance.
She looks through me,
like I am the ghost.
I wrote a eulogy for Mel,
a long string of text messages she never answered
because her heart was too broken.
She is still finding the photos he took of her
in the dark abscesses and hidden cracks.
When strangers look at her
as she passes by the on the street,
she wonders what they have seen of her.
When I walk through the graveyard,
I avoid reading my own epitaph
and step carefully over the hyacinths.
The gate to the car park has creaked open
and hands are
emerging from the soil,
grasping for the sun.
Treasa Nealon is a writer and playwright based in Leitrim
