Brian Hurley is an emerging Irish writer based in Ballina, Co. Tipperary. As well as having previously been published in the online ezine Epoque Borders Edition, Brian has also published many articles ranging from linguistics to social justice. After completing his BA in English at WIT Brian worked for a time in public relations before transitioning into English language teaching. He is currently completing a MA in Applied Linguistics at the University of Limerick and working towards his first collection of poems.

Stranger

I will always be a stranger.

The one who sits in a bar full of laughter,
wanting to cry.
The one who walks the streets at night,
to find company.
Who in flat after flat, city after city, country after country-
still, can never feel at home.
Who never truly wants, and therefore, is never truly wanted,
or missed.
Who can never belong, because if truth be told,
they were never really there.
Who finds solace in their strangeness, their failings the only
evidence of life.
Who throughout their life has worn this mask, to keep others
from recoiling en-masse.

Who like a migratory bird leaves to return to the same place
each year, though never laying an egg.
Who sings the sorrowful tune each morning with the corncrake
as we look for a mate, both in vain.
Who writes these lines to pass inevitable time, and forget,
just for a moment, why all that is- is.
Who watched as they fell gratefully into the jaws of depression
hoping for an end, only to find a start.
Who lives each day as Edmund, a consumed bastard and illegitimate,
flayed by jealousy and incompetence.