One day when my eyes are the heavens and my body has turned to the wind

We, who stand here, are nothing, 

  and we shiver, 

  like the remnants of blades of grass, 

  floating on an ancestral sheared centimetre —

  a thickness.

And if revolution is the stamen, seed, and sheaf, 

   the loose leaf upon which we write our history, 

   ours is wracked by an absence of universal truths, 

   of dreams to abhor, and causes through which, 

   whether for or against, we can define ourselves

   in perpetuity, both as the living and the dead.

Yet I serenade myself, 

  walking the cold path, 

  my decisions wrapped in ribbons,

  howling at the moon,

  and wonder,

  how long will my image linger?

Yet I return, as we all must, unto dirt,

   and take comfort that great roots will spring from my feet, 

   one day when my eyes are the heavens, 

   and my body has turned to the wind.

All ashes, 

That’s all I am.

A poet, part-time academic in narratological complexity, and financial journalist, Dublin born Oisín Breen’s widely reviewed debut collection, ‘Flowers, all sorts in blossom, figs, berries, and fruits, forgotten’ was released Mar. 2020. Breen has been published in a number of journals, including About Place, the Blue Nib, Books Ireland, the Seattle Star, Modern Literature, La Piccioletta Barca, the Bosphorus Review of Books, the Kleksograph, In Parentheses, Kairos, and Dreich magazine.