in weeks leading up to the wedding
an old girlfriend calls. she’s in town
for a day in the offing – not distant –
on a weekend abroad with some friends.
says she’d love to catch up; get a coffee
and some advice sightseeing. maybe
a beer. god – I missed her so much
when I got here. beauty doesn’t even
come close – melissa was sex moving shyly
with socks on a box bedroom floor.
once – another city, another continent –
sometime back then, and then breakfast.
I ignore her a while – then open the message:
tell her I can’t. my fiancée is not
jealous generally, but was jealous of her –
back when we first got together,
and were then together for long enough
for stories about previous girlfriends
to come up in a way that might mean things.
I don’t tell her that, not now that it
was four years earlier. it’s 2022.
I suggest some things in dublin
in locations where I won’t bump into her.
I’m honest, but strategic: the natural
history museum is actually good.
there’s a quite striking cliffwalk
on the coast – south by bray. various
distilleries with interesting histories
and which mainly are nowhere near my place.
DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His work has been nominated fourteen times for BOTN, eleven for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections, most recently “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)