Meg Mulcahy

We sit ditch-side in curdled breeze and watch as curlews tango in briar and thorn. Bodies like mine are made of bogland, stacked and drying. Wind song of the rushes tussle breathes for me, stifled lest the world end.

The vampire’s disembodied hands tell me nothing except that the curlew dwindles because of their snitching. They peel a pomegranate with hoof-handled knife while we wait, populating foreign land. The hanged man knows not what comes of his fruit.

I reminisce about things I used to care for – haircuts, coffee shops, train station kisses. Watching the reels and reels of unspeakable things flicker through my mind like the tongue between sliding sinew as a lover lifts my chin.

But today, I sit with a sriracha slinger, burying fallen teeth in a living grave in hopes that some of me stays rooted, that the next will be swift. Begging, willing the creature to speak, that this carving may end.

Meg Mulcahy is a writer based in Dublin, Ireland, that runs on hope and gallows humour. Her work has featured in publications like Okay Donkey, Kissing Dynamite Poetry and The Molotov Cocktail. Most recently, she was longlisted for the Cambridge Flash Prize 2020. You can find her ever on Twitter @TheGoldenMej