Shark Heart

by aoife-marie buckley

It’s not even that I’ve thought about

Them a lot

It’s more that I’ve thought about

How it felt to be

With them,

Those days -

A short coffee,

Rushed even, in Bewley’s,

After twelve years apart.

The long spacious length of

A morning and afternoon

In the gallery

Looking at the sown hearts

And the shark heart

in its submarine reliquary,

With no need to write a shared dictionary

Because somehow there is no explanation

Necessary -

And then a rainy bench in Stephen’s Green

Sitting on your coat

Under my umbrella,

Between Joyce and Rabindranath,

Spilling our own

To each other.

And I wonder about them

And their grown love,

Could we inhabit there,

a new pairidaeza,

Together?

Verbosity brings me to realism

But not relativism, thankfully,

And I’ll be a guesser I suppose,

But will you be an asker?