When we weren’t listening it
would be the loudest, or in the
shower through the walls that
weren’t quite thick enough.

I would catch you in church
when everyone else was
singing too. My brother and I
would sit in the pews while you
stood and softly sang along,
unaware that we were
old enough to notice
the beat you tapped onto
the wooden benches.

Best of all was when we
were sleeping,
or when you thought we were.
I would lay beneath the sheets
with your hands in my hair and
let your melody wash over me,
lull me awake with the desire to
hear more.

Your words were never enough
because they were always too much.
But in the rare, private moments that
I found you singing,
I would wish you were bold
enough to let me hear you.

Inspired by Anne Carson

I once woke in the darkness
to find you sleeping next to me
on the far side of my bed,
your sharp black outline pressed
firmly against the wall.

The hard breathing of your bad
dream cracked into the
darkness and for the first
time I felt deep within me
the primal urge
to hold you,
to blur with
my soft body
the dark pencil lines
the night had traced
around you,
erasing the fear
I found there.

Now through the sharp dry sleep
that accumulates in
the bleary corners of
my eyes, I find
only the
dark outline
of an empty shell.


~Rory Finnegan

I thought I’d forgotten
what it felt like to love you.
How easy it was, like
leaping from the side of
the sea into soothing water,
like the snow sliding away
beneath a sled. How easy
to love you.

Forgetting was the inverse
like—two
bodies curled around one
another for the
first time, for the last time.
Swimming ashore
was never forgiving,
climbing snow
was never gentle.

But I had forgotten,
I thought I had forgotten,
until you returned with
the cruel words that made
waves crash backwards,
snow fly up into the sky.

The inverse, again;
you were always giving
me inverses.
How much you could
hurt me still, with words
that remembered loving you.

~Rory Finnegan

10/31/2014
The white tulle circling my waist
keeps me caught here, in this in between,
a nearly empty drink clutched in my left hand.
A new one is poured and in a moment
I am young again, suddenly back at

my first ballet recital:
tutu wider than I am tall,
hands resting on
the sheer size of it,
red cheeks
pinched with happiness

or, Halloween, age 8:
the skirted mermaid’s tail
my mother had sewn for me,
the felt scales of it
beneath my tiny hands,
the glitter on my eyes
too heavy

or that family vacation:
the Maui sun setting behind me,
dancing on the beach with
my hands in the long plastic grass
that trailed from my
narrow hips,
the real flowers
around my neck slowly dying,
the adults looking on.


~Rory Finnegan

The mattresses are piled
high on the curb
in the morning, sagging
together in a sorry heap
as if they, too, got
wasted last night.

Perhaps they’re left to burned.
Tonight, will we watch
the flames dance with the
blaring music, dance
in the distance between
not enough sleep and
too much alcohol?

Perhaps the frat boys
have got new beds,
ready to stain fresh mattresses
with the crudeness
of what happens here at night.



~Rory Finnegan