BROWSE Columns
✕
(After Eavan Boland)
Once I had a book of thoughts
But somewhere between my 18th year
And the present
The landscape has been beaten
Beyond recognition.
Today I map my slipped thoughts
From darkness, an unwelcome fog,
And sew their curves and light
To a birth.
Once I stitch the parts –
Parts that have no ending
And that scarcely have a beginning –
I learn that words still have to run.
Breath blessed
I inhale
And sing again
A new anthem
This is my gift, this fractured verse of envy,
A schism of synaptic pulses,
These relics folded and unfolded in sheets of blank paper.
I christen a new dialect,
Half-silhouette on my tongue,
An absence of night,
But still a seed buried deeper than the earth,
A sound outside of distance.
Roisin Ní Neachtain is an Irish- Scottish autistic poet and artist. Her art features in international private collections and her poetry has featured in Poethead, Beir Bua and Drawn to the Light amongst others. She is currently working on her first collection of poetry.
