Faust and I

Those destinations were for scalding love,
their apex crashing seas on tall cliffs,
voluminous shifting currents, all claiming
and breaking waters, evanescent

you-might-never-be-the-same-again waters.
I came back to a different shore.
I was changed but the world was the same. I longed
to go back, beat my fists on the glass of reality,

the starlit sky of the coldest winter I’d known,
the freeze that turned branches and leaves
to dripping icicles, petrified the ground.
How could anything ever grow again?

Órla Fay edits Boyne Berries. Recently her poetry has appeared in The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, among others. She has been shortlisted for various awards and was also shortlisted for this year’s Cúirt New Writing Prize. Órla won 3rd prize in The Oliver Goldsmith Poetry Award 2019. Her short story Foxy was published on the incubator selects in April. She is working towards her first collection of poetry. Her blog is orlafay.blogspot.com.

Read more of Órla here.