28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
New Irish Writing: Poetry by Fiona Tracey
The winning poem for June 2025
Fiona is a poet living in Cork. She holds a BA in creative writing from Shepherd University and an MA with distinction in creative writing from UCC. A finalist for the Bournemouth Writing Prize and the Redline Poetry Prize, Fiona has been a featured poet at the Winter Warmer Poetry Festival, Ó Bhéal and DeBarra's Spoken Word. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Anthropocene, Channel, ROPES, Ragaire, Southword, HOWL and elsewhere.
or maybe away from it, I can't be sure anymore, and trying to crystallise my thoughts on the subject of life, or maybe love (but aren't they the same), and knew that when you've loved someone, any time you leave will be too soon, even if your stomach has grown cold while you stayed (because the stomach is where you feel coldness grow and not the heart), and I'd lingered too long at the jewellery shop window (because windows are where you can forever find dreams), and passed a cigarette between raindrops for an excuse to touch his hand, and felt the cold coming through the stone wall long before winter (for always I must have a wall at my back), and rushed for the last train even when I knew it was a pointless attempt, and invited the stranger up to my flat and damn the consequences (and now he is a stranger again), and sensed the ground giving in to my feet and wished it was made of stronger stuff, and found myself hungry for the yellow light just beyond the doorway of each house and each life on the cab ride home, and watched the day melt down the walls (and watched the day melt down the walls), and worried that this was the last person I'd love, and saw the Northern lights burn in the South, and pondered the phrase the measure of my dreams, and felt expensive and also felt cheap, and coaxed what was left of me out of myself, and let the roar of the engines fill my chest, as we seemed to pause between now and then, and stepped down on to the tarmac into wind and rain, and knew that there were still choices to make.
