A Hard Rain

Before my unprotected death, and the death of my small son,
there was a catch on my bicycle chain that I had planned to fix.
The bite of a fresh apple gave me secret, buried joy.
The taste of milk and honey made me sick.

In the ceiling of my room, a crack appeared.
There was badness in the church’s holy smell,
and threaded whispers sloping round the town,
and cruel jokes I could not comprehend.

More than anything, they told me to be nice,
insisting on the shape of every truth.
‘Smile,’ they said, that old and wearisome command.
How come they didn’t know I would refuse?

There was the dying of my light, my hope;
Our Lady’s stone abandonment of grace.
I wrapped my little child inside my coat.
And a hard rain fell, dark and cold against my face.

Sarah Moore Fitzgerald is an Irish writer based in Co Clare. Her fiction for children and young adults has been translated into over twenty languages and adapted for the stage. She is a recent winner of The London Magazine’s short story competition (2022) and has broadcast several radio essays. A prose poem of hers appears in the latest edition of Splonk. Following our acceptance, this poem was shortlisted in the Frances Browne poetry competition.