The Ofi Press Magazine

Poem by Alvy Carragher (Ireland)

Published in The Ofi Press Issue 34

On Letting Things Go

1. My Grandmother told me that after he died it took seven years before she woke without the weight of him.

2. They filter in and out; form a knot in your stomach or a noose in your mind. It is about loosening the ropes not forgetting they were there.

3. Chocolate is a prayer not an answer.

4. Burning things only makes their stains last longer. There is nothing left to show the truth of what happened. Do not turn their ashes into myth.

5. Dance in rain, feel the endless pelt of this moment, now, how there is nothing else.

6. Pictures are a way of haunting yourself with the past. Paper-cutting your heart with their insistence that this was happy.

7. Looking over your shoulder will not help you move backwards, you will only end up stumbling blind into loves next hurdle.

8. If you wake with the taste of their name on your lips, write it down, do not let them sit at the tip of your mind, put them away.

9. Sink to the bottom of something, open your eyes, let water wash out the screams. Under water you cannot hear the sound of pain, only watch its bubbles drift away.

10. After seven years, my grandmother said, it was more of a dull ache than an open wound.

Young Irish Writer who us currently studying a Masters of Writing at NUIG. Highly commended in the Gerry O’Donoghue Poetry Prize. Came third in the 2013 Doire Press Poetry Chapbook Competition and was also highly commended for the Over the Edge New Writer 2013. Writing published in Bare Hands, Wordlegs, The Boheymth, Under-thirty.org, Doire Press Poetry anthology and aboard the Poetry Bus. The current Connaught Slam Poetry Champion.