It looks now like an unconscious revenge.
Was it, in fact, a brooding payback?
to turn the tables, six to one,
and present you with not just good intentions,
but a Sisyphean task
when your own boulder was already beyond you.
We piled up bedside tomes.
Each with a qualifier –
some late-night chat, some throwaway phrase.
Noted, recalled and returned to you
in bound volumes with built-in bookmarks.
With a new foreword, perhaps an essay.
Too soon after they were dustily stacked.
From the dining room table we ate our words
and placed white stickers inside each cover:
“Ex Libris”, a library unburned, though unread.
(Inspired by not just one book, but the many gifted to our father, Tom Flynn, by my siblings and me – among which were at least a few copies of ‘The Complete Works of William Shakespeare’.)
Eoin Flynn
Eoin Flynn is a visual artist for whom writing is part of practice. Taken under the wing of the Platform One writers’ group he has been inspired by the experience and guidance of its members. A production journalist and designer, he is also founder of Bluefoot Press with its first publication – Orla Grant-Donoghue’s second collection Fragments – published in 2019.
Twitter: @eointf