Microdosing

I’d been microdosing grief for years
before you died, starting with the day
you cried off walking to the ice house
on Slieve Donard. You began to shy away
from coming down the pub to watch United.
Then all those little trips to Daisy Hill,
the slow erosion of your smile and will.

My tolerance had grown sky-high, leaving me
dry-eyed at your funeral and each day since,
wondering what might kick in down the line—
how once in London I mistimed a tab,
came up on the Underground to watch
the carriage explode in white light, over and over,
hurtling from Morden to Blackhorse Road.

Paul Moclair is from County Down. He lives in the French Pyrenees and works as a consultant for international NGOs using art and theatre-based approaches in the fields of education and children’s rights. He completed an MA in Writing Poetry at the Seamus Heaney Centre, QUB in 2025. He has had work published in The Ogham Stone and Manifest.