After a summer of walks,
I have many photos of your rear.
Oh,
and one with a scarf flung to your face.
I try and fail.
Try better, fail better -
snap your side-face on a distant rock.
Never mind.
I have hoarded you from selfies and strangers –
nipped in
snipped you.
Or, clicked
Option, Download, Save.
I have birthed a folder of you.
My daughter, in places,
with people,
I do not know.
You look happy.
Deirdre McClay has published fiction widely including in The Irish Times, Sunday Tribune, Crannog, Wordlegs, The Weary Blues, Number Eleven, and The Incubator. She was nominated for a Hennessy First Fiction Award in 2005, and has been listed and placed in competitions including The Lonely Voice, Doire Press International Fiction Chapbook, From the Well Cork Library, and The Over the Edge New Writer of the Year. She is a member of the organising team of North West Words which runs a monthly reading event in Letterkenny, and she blogs with the writing group Garden Room Writers at http://gardenroomwritersdonegal.blogspot.ie/
More work by Deirdre McClay
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