Would You Rather

I want to disappear into a pool of blood on your living room carpet,
a cloud of dust that only the studio cameras can find.
I want the New York Times to say that my corpse redefined a genre.
Buzzfeed to put my blood on a list of Ten Binge-Worthy Netflix Shows.
I want you to surprise them.
Whisper your confession on a hot mic, or not at all.
Make the boys think you did it and the girls say you’re worth it.
I want a six part series that doesn’t mention my name.

On one of those bitter Septembers the boys gave us a boost over the fence into the private gardens by Gabriel’s church, Lucy leaned over the fire we put together and asked would we rather die alone or love a husband who killed us.

When they finally find my body
have them do it with the flash on.
Show the world just how much weight decomposition can shave off.
A blonde reporter stepping over the body to discuss intimate partner violence.
Seventy percent of murders, growing epidemic, not discussed enough, I wonder where he hid the head?

Dublin 2019 

and here where the metal cranes have become as much natural as the cherry blossoms. and here, where i have wailed in every garden on campus. and here, where i’ve watched the vultures pave over the grounds i’ve razed up with my heartbreak. and here where we’ve said the smartest things we’ll ever say about books we’ll never read. here where we are a diminishing resource, here where we can only fight for so long, where they squeeze us through an hourglass. and here here here where i will leave on a plane to somewhere i’ve never touched. somewhere bigger, brighter, and rent capped. 

Studying To Kill a Mockingbird in Year Two

our english teacher explains the word rape like we have never heard it before. what mayella (pronounced like paella) accused the black man of doing. what girls shouldn’t accuse men of doing. from the top of the class she flings us back to an education never offered

but found through whispers. why we walk home in twos or threes, why we don’t sit beside our second uncles at christmas dinner. what happened to that poor girl on crescent park, near the grocer. what lucie’s mother cried about for two weeks, scaling the walls of her husband’s room in her cherry nightgown, drinking pink gin the grocer said he sold her just that morning.

even for the girls who did not know that word, who waited until now to fear it, felt it once with brothers’ laptops, her pulls and gasps, skin and scream. fully clothed with wide eyes, pushing against the pillow beneath them, a schooling in their own home.

Sophie Furlong Tighe is a second year Drama and Theatre Studies student in Trinity College Dublin. She’s an ex-slam poet and current writer of everything. Her poetry has previously been published in This is Not Where I Belong and Headstuff, where she won Slam Sunday twice, as well as appearing in the final of their Grand Slam.