Dr Esmorie Miller is a lecturer in criminology in the Lancaster University Law School. Appointed in 2022, she previously taught at Queen’s University Belfast and London South Bank University. She completed her PhD research, in Political Theory, with a focus on youth, race, gender, and justice in Britain. Creative methods help shape her unique approach to research, in youth justice and with young people.
Sketches of Life
Today, an old song returned to memory
Long ago, in our high school library, Sarah sang it to me: it goes like this, I skirt the edge of Sanity and I realize I have never been this close before
Today, as it was on that day with Sarah, I thought: Sanity, so sane, so hollow. What have you cost me, as I remain always obscured by approaches so sane, I am unable to see?
‘By the way’ he said to me, ‘Your grandmother passed away. She died a few days ago’
She was foreign to me. No exchanges of affection ever passed between us, not even on the one occasion when we came face to face, and on that other when we traded greetings over the telephone. Is this Sanity or madness, where is my grief, my sorrow, my pain?
‘How do you feel?’ I remembered to ask him. Since I had no feelings of my own, I reckoned on a trade in emotion; secondhand sadness, from her death to his sorrow, to some semblance of woe in me. Tears came to my eyes for the love he never knew from her. And for the fact that I would not have known about her death had I not called him to say hello. It was a second thought, a ‘By the way’
His response was dry with desolation, in undertones of squandered expectations and opportunities, now forever lost. Where did I lose the time with him, where did he with her?
Irony and Shame are easily accessible, as my Sanity stands firm, refusing to be discarded
I search amidst an incessant buzz, and I find a broom, made from the leaves of bamboo brush and I pause as I remember the echo of the bamboo song, whistling in the wind
‘I don’t know how I feel’ he said. ‘I am sad I suppose. She left me alone, a long time ago, and never returned to get me. I was five years old’
I calculated. He was over sixty years now. An entire lifetime had passed; a bond-less experience; no trades in smiles; not even a ‘go away, not right now’ an expectation of love to be offered later
He felt discarded, she ‘never returned to get me’ he said
Left unsaid, ‘now she never will’
Who was she? Why did she love him so little?
The legacy she set in motion—even at her final exit he was the little boy waiting
And slowly a numbing indifference curses through my veins, methodically, a siege
I do not know if I like my Sanity
I do not want it to go
With frantic indifference I try to sweep it from mind.
Who decides to love, how, and why?
My friend had a father who hugged her every day; my mother had a mother who taught me how to pray. Now I sit on a fence as I watch the time go by
Rationally, I say, ‘I do not like him. But we are connected by blood, so I love him’
I do not know what I will do when time takes him away. We all live on borrowed time, but his is a numbered prime, five, maybe seven months to go
‘He did not know how to love me. I will not allow myself emotional involvement’
Thoughts bounded by Sanity and bookended by Irony and Shame.
I sit on my fence, willfully, waiting for the regret I know will be mine
Pain filled intervals, dosages of wrath, tangle me in a web of shame and loathing
I use the broom to sweep them away
I am sitting on my fence: Calmly, Rationally, Sanely
Today, I skirt the edge of Sanity, full of expectation at what lays on the other side
Today, I let go of my Sanity
Friend, what did you do?
Today, I waved Sanity good-bye
Friend what did you do?
Today, Sanity begged to stay
But I chased Her to the doorstep
And bade Her good-bye
No, I am sorry, but Sanity doesn’t live here anymore: She has been traded in for Irony and Madness, if you wait, I will get them for you
Modern Woman Though I Be
It rained, again, today
Downtown, from Belfast’s City Hall, I watched beams of celestial light fitfully cast Hope, across a low draping sky. At the edge of Titanic quarter, I reached up a lone right hand in wonder, fingers grasping, an Intrepid’s effort to touch the stretched canvas, fastened firm across boundless horizons
Earlier, amongst friends trading farewell kisses on wine lunched cheeks, the afternoon sun visited upon us a warm Belfast glow—assertive, vibrant, brief
Am I in paradise?
The sky the limit?
No, but I am here
—nowhere to run
—bracketed in by persistence
—unwavering grief
—I am Constant
—and still journeying, with Calm
One, two, three: I count the paper stars in the sky
The million that I can see
I have been to paradise before
And even in paradise moments stacked themselves side by side
All around me
And above me
And immersed me
No place to run
I am that self, even here
Standing by the darkened moon
Waiting, wanting
To be over It
To be over Loss
To understand, how
To be over the Moon
Her Sacred Nest
‘We found nothing’ they had told her
One day she detailed to me the story, of when they took him away
She stepped back and watched them un-stack all her carefully folded, closeted items, washed and ironed, creaseless—on Sunday evenings
They opened cupboards filled with dishes and trinkets she had earned
She watched as they tossed the belongings of her innocent bird
But this was Her Sacred Nest
She had taken years to gather the straws in her tiny beak, that quivers still, against winter’s cold
‘Why did they come?’ I asked her then
And she relayed to me, what they had said to her
‘We know it wasn’t him; but he knows, and he can tell us. We need him to tell us’
They told her that she did not have to worry, because they found nothing
It confirmed what they thought—he was not their man
But he must know something, they were sure of it, so they held on to him
He would be home soon; in next to no time, but only after he spilled the beans
Until then, they would keep him so they could squeeze him and make him come clean
But it was one whole year later before they released him and let him return home
And in that time,
He remained silent
He remained safe
Blue, Knitted Gloves
It lay curled upright upon the winter sidewalk: one small, blue, knitted glove
I am on the road towards the Lagan Towpath
On my morning run, today a brisk walk, too much ice
The fear of falling reeling me in
The walk, though, keeps me tethered to my routine
There it lay, the pattern of a snowflake knitted firmly upon its upright facing palm
I turn my face and gaze the other away
I saw the second, when I round a nearby corner
It’s part of a pair
This time I do not turn my gaze away
Not discarded then: Fallen? Lost?
I am sad: the emotion sparked by these two displaced objects
I am sad: again, I admit, no longer in disregard
I pause, gazing upon the extended fingers
Protruding upwards, covered partially by seasonal remnants
prickly stems, dried, browned, and amidst broken leaves
its white snowflake pattern blotched with speckles of putrid excess
They have not been lost long
But I cannot linger
I am driven forward
by the stinging insistence of the winter wind
which both mocks and chastises my unwise choice
to wear running gear for walking,
in the Belfast winter
I move on, towards my goal, in a brisk trot
The gloves’ journey toward loss and lost
infusing sadness into my thoughts
as I consider objects fitting like a glove
Objects gripped close to chest, held to heart
Gripped like a glove, pressed to face, breathed in deeply
Gripped like a glove, held to lips, brushed over by kisses
Gripped like a glove, held between teeth, stuffed into pockets,
and purses, and other intimate spaces
Objects, here, now, objected
glanced at, skirted around,
discredited by strangers
They lay resting, one apart from the other
They lay buried, amid refuse
The frigid winter sidewalk,
becoming their graveyard
Lost and Found
Let them lay where they rest—in full view—blue and white; knitted; gloves
each a tale of loss, arranged against the early morning sidewalk
I stand above them, looking down, looking upwards
looking outwards
as light poured steadily around me, filling in the day
cheering the transformation to 4.30am sunrise
spring is here
I am then deliberately on my knees
head bowed forward, rocking back and forth
overwhelmed by both disquiet and gratitude
I should be in prayer
I should be following through with gracious missives
but I look at the gloves, instead
and wonder who will come in search of them
who will come looking, now that spring is here
disquiet then—that’s the path my thoughts have taken
I want to pick them up, turn them over, inspect them
as I have done, on this path, with my fretful thoughts of failure
and dying, so many times
I want to breath into them my gratitude: thank you, spring is here
But I do not move them
I imagine, instead, an owner
frantic, distraught, retracing steps, in search of precious items thought lost
then at last, grateful, gleeful, clutching, rectifying accidental loss
Spring is here, I say aloud
making sure to infuse my doubt filled words with gratitude
let them lay where they rest—blue and white, knitted gloves—in full view
There is no lost and found
This is where I had found myself—in full view of the world—blue and bruised and twisted into myriad uncanny knots,
when once I had mistaken my failure for dying
The Galway Review 