Cavehill

If art was honest, a poem would be 10,000 blank pages.
But art is a gentle deception, and so I will tell you a story:

It begins with a girl who wanted magic so desperately to be real she cut out her
heart and replaced it with a jar of river water, a fingerling trout within circling
around a smooth agate wish, forever until it died in isolation.
This, too, is not a metaphor.

This is a work of dream interpretation.

There are places that do not exist
where I have stored away the pieces of my
self most in need of retrieval
I retrace the architecture
reverse engineer blueprints
for the insufferable scholar
at the front of the room who, desperate to perform proficiencies,
lobs baubles of overwrought critique at the face of the moon herself.

I cannot be this version of myself for much longer.

In the contemplative peristalsis of greens and yellows,
I wish I could become a robin in the gorse brush

I go to Ben Madigan to collect water
from the volunteer’s well
in the hope that I can bring back with me
the eye of the fair folk

that they might see me
and know me
when all others fail—an invitation,
if nothing else—
and wonder why I wish to be so humbled
by their gaze
the very same impulse that finds me before the thrones of devils
who would sneer

“You Are So Very Insignificant”
to which I reply
“I know.

Isn’t it delicious?”