An Áit Eile is proud to present ‘Vacancy’ by Liz Quirke. It was first published in Skylight 47 and it’s from her forthcoming Salmon poetry debut The Road, Slowly.
Also, Liz will join Annemarie Ní Churreáin and Rachel Coventry at the Spotlight on New Voices event at the Cúirt International Festival of Literature 2018. It will take place in the Town Hall Theatre on Saturday 28 April at 11AM, and tickets can be purchased on the Cúirt website.
Happy International Women’s Day!
Vacancy
I have this time when she is asleep
to scrawl my thoughts.
She is lodged into my shape,
a comfort from thigh to chest.
Before her, I believed
I claimed the space I was meant to.
When I relaxed I assumed
my hollows held their own.
But there must have been a lack,
a vacancy that called to her,
because she arrived and fitted into place
into the arc of my body on this bed,
into parts of my days
I didn’t know were empty.