Blood Brothers

 

We dragged you from a yellow house

to my family home, passing potholes that held 

secrets in cloudy orange clay. 

 

I poured you red wine in my mother’s

cup and unfurled a yoga mat, 

the bends of spines and twists of waists

 

were knives that sliced pumpkin-eyed slits

onto our fingertips, to spell iron-bound pacts 

of unspoken words stitched to our lips.

 

How far can one person stretch before they snap?

From down-dog to pigeon, your head bowed and fell

like rolling marble on sloped table.

A few days earlier your father was found

 

face-down, floating in heaven. I always said October

felt like something I couldn’t put my finger on, 

bright grey days that pushed the light away.

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Áine Rose is an artist and poet from Donegal, Ireland. She has a bachelor’s degree in Speech & Language Therapy from Trinity College, Dublin (2017) and a postgraduate fine-art degree from the Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughan, Clare (2021). She has been awarded the Emerging Artist Bursary Award from Arts & Health funded by Irish Health Service & Irish Arts Council (2022). Her work has appeared in Lothlorien Journal, Morning Fruit, Icarus, A New Ulster & Irish Arts Review. 

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