Dark Christmas

Your last Christmas and we knew it.
You unwrapped six craft ales;

I knew they were too much.
Even a sip now gave you heartburn.

Yet you smiled, feigned that they
wouldn’t last long. But there they sat —

January kicked us in the stomach
when you zoned out one afternoon,

never to return; a one-way ticket
to the heavens and craft beers

gathering white dust on the floor.
Looking through the old lens

pointed at the dark Christmas of my past,
we are starlit; planetary wraiths

orbiting each other. Someday,
corporeal, we’ll drain those bottles dry.

Amy Louise Wyatt is a poet, lecturer, and artist from Bangor, Northern Ireland. She has had work published in a range of literary journals and magazines such as The Honest Ulsterman, FourxFour, and Cold Coffee Stand. Amy has read her poetry on The BBC Arts Show, at University of Ulster’s Riverside Readings, and at festivals throughout Ireland. She is the editor of The Bangor Literary Journal and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing 2018.

amylouisewyatt.com