Leonie Lacey is a 2017 graduate of the BA with Creative Writing programme at NUIG. Born in Connemara and raised in the fields of Athenry, Galway, she has always been a keen writer with a special interest in poetry. Having spent the last couple of years working in a bookshop, she’s currently living in Sydney attempting to tackle her arachnophobia and travel around Australia before returning to Galway to pursue a career in teaching.

Fossil

The quake in their voices
rattles her bed frame.
The word leaving is magma
erupting from fissures in
their pursed lips, false smiles,
an island in the making for him,
a shack for the children,
but even they won’t take the boat out.

And before she can be
wrenched from the sheets
and marched to dress she lets the
molten rock envelop her frame,
lets the ash settle in
the cracks of her skin –
now fossil in the space between
the old land and the new.

Threshold

You sink to the doorstep
as the kitchen radio blinks
five a.m. in blue,
and scrabble at the pulled chain
in the threshold gap,
four magenta kisses smeared
on your left cheek,
a cider spill tickling the collar
of your Sunday shirt,
and I listen for apologies
above the jangle of pennies
meeting spare key,
as you jam ringless fingers
in pockets deep enough
to bury the both of us.

Centrepiece

Maybe you’ll be a centrepiece
at her empty table too,
themed to hold and embellish
every anxious thought
she’s ever voiced.