Fridge Milk

Valuable things are so easily broken —
you learnt that when the water
still held our secrets.

When the moon was close enough
to smell beach salt and vanilla hands.
The night was fridge milk,
our bodies constellations.

The Harvest

On the day Sandy buried her pups
they were harvesting maize from the fields.

She chose a spot behind the compost heap
that rose in the corner of the garden.

A great mound of detritus,
she laid her unborn children beneath it.

Knowing somehow that they’d return to her
as flowers in the spring.

After Reading

After you read it all you came in crying
and I asked What’s the matter?

You said
I never knew about it

And I said
I never told you

I’m your mother, I should have known

I’ve always been good at hiding.

The clouds in your cornea broke again and I said
Everything’s okay now though.

Daragh Fleming is an author from Cork, Ireland. His debut in non-fiction, a collection of essays on mental health called Lonely Boy, was published by BookHub Publishing. He has had work appear in several literary magazines. He has been been highly commended for the Patrick Kavanagh Award and the Fool For Poetry Prize, and has also been shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. Learn more via @daraghfleming (X) and thoughtstoobig.ie

A version of ‘Fridge Milk’ first appeared in Skylight 47.