Boundary

Aware of her boundary, she walked on. Careless of her step, feeling the uneven surface beneath her light shoes. It was becoming more difficult to see where the land ended and the water began.

She heard the rain arriving above her in the trees
before she felt it on her thin and fragile skin. Its smell refreshing.

Static and reliable, her boundary had defined and encompassed her body like the fine line of a pencil drawing. Fitting snugly, it had been flexible yet unconsidered. The bluegrey companion line had protected, held her in comfort.

The line darkened as the sky darkened, more linked to the night than to her body. Becoming tighter and tighter, it suddenly releases at her head, uncurls like a spring, snaps back, cracking hard against her ankles. She jumps, moves beyond it, leaving it coiled up behind her. It lies in an oval on its edge. Quiet.

Infinite space spreads out around her. Unprotected, she is fluid and formless. Seeping.
Oozing. Dissolving. She might occupy no space or limitless space. She is everywhere at once. And nowhere. Everything is within her grasp, yet nothing can be reached.

Liquid and amorphous, delineated only by her memory, she stretches unbounded. Vast and broad. Deep and capacious. Unencumbered.

The night is quiet.

Sand

Bottle blue sea in sunshine. Lens rounded pale blue-grey pebbles and white frosted sea-blunt glass fragments. Rock pools with bloodsucking sea anemones and transparently striped shrimps.

Icy mist envelopes three-dimensional angular planes of other memories. Isolates and obscures. Dampens and swirls around mottled sounds.

Needing to meet but fearing the heavy clash of friction and cold spark. Geometric encounters. Engagements without compassion. Battlefield charges against an outnumbering and unbeatable
enemy. Reloading with distant words. Words cold. Closed faces.

Angles and sweating leaden surfaces. Ashes and moist oyster faces. Grey thin and angular. Thin grey and sealed. Cut.

Sharp eyes squint mechanically as wedges of speech volley across the gap and implode on impact.

Square against square. Line on line. Uncompromising sandpaper corners of cubed memories appear through the mist. Scraping and rasping they flatten into slowing ashen oblongs. Turning silently. Wet powder-grey mist.

Compressed into flat squares and folded neatly edge to edge they enclose the memory. Drawings created on the backs of memories fracture on folding. Making unexpected links and connections.

Folded and pushed into the slim gap between today and yesterday, into the sliver of space between now and then, they fall haphazardly.

The folded memories sit quietly. Waiting. They have no power to move or intrude. Powerless. Immobile. They cannot posture or threaten. Grasp or subvert. Cannot persuade, invade or delude. They may overlap but each has its own boundary. Merging only when prised open.

Jinking images on ciné film, to rhythm of revolving sound, of children laughing and running on the beach.

A line of cousins grin at the camera.

^

Biography

I was born in Dublin and in 1985, having worked in business for over fifteen years, I decided to go to college. In 1989 I achieved a First Class Honours Diploma in Textile Design with a Special Commendation for my written submission at the History of Art at the National College of Art and Design. Two years later I was awarded a Master's Degree in the History of Art from the same institution. On completion of my thesis, I realized that I needed to continue writing. I also knew that I needed to create my own stories, my own histories, and to break away from the tyranny of the footnote. I began writing short stories in 1991 and have written many short prose pieces and poems, in addition to two stories for children. My work has been broadcast by the BBC World Service, and by RTE. Many of my stories and poems have been published in anthologies and magazines at home and abroad. I aim to have my poems published together in book form.