Home

I rub, and RUB my eyes;
Ferocious;
Don’t,
Don’t, sweetheart.

Then the plane tips toward the cool thick Irish sea
So that I can face it
Gaze into it
From my seat.
Home!

Clouds bubble over the razor wings
The light jumps into my tired gaze.
Home!

Steel

There must be steel in women
Who say no.
I am made of utter fudge
Compelled, somehow, to reply and smile
And be grateful for the fleeting interest.

This is exactly the kind of thing
A better me
Would never do.

August

I have never been so hollow
I will never be so hollow
I just felt so hollow
When I refused to fix it
When you left that city a day too early
When you cried to your mother on the phone
She doesn’t even know me
I wish I could tell her I was sorry.

Stucco

I want to build
I want to – I need to restructure
Gut my foundations
Cut into the old black brick below me
Throw it out onto the road –

Let the neighbours have a look.
Let the dust cough up until
The air is easier to breathe.

All I can do
Is cover with stucco.

Since She Did That

Since she did that
We can’t walk through rivers the same way,
You know?
Hand in hand?
Guessing for the soft shells and pebbles
And hoping not to cross sharp rock.

Since she did that
I don’t reach for her if I slip on the sloppy moss
I don’t shriek her name, laughing, while I crash underwater
I don’t grasp at her as we splash to the other side

We just cross it
Together, and smiling, don’t worry –
But we cross it
Alone.

2am

Why do I turn inside out and back again
And then!
Back AGAIN!
AT TWO AM!
Reading messages you last checked
In 2017.

Since She Did That and other poems are © E.D. Hickey

E.D. Hickey is twenty-four and living and studying law in Dublin. She most recently spent half a year in Vienna, Austria working for the United Nations and graduated from UCD Law with Philosophy in 2017. While at university she recorded, edited and produced a feminist discussion-panel podcast called Pink Void (episodes available on Soundcloud) with two friends.