After You Tell Me

Sophie Furlong Tighe

I point tourists to your apartment instead of the museum. I tell

them they’ll have to knock twice. I spit in your drink when 

you visit me at work. I write your phone number on a 

telephone pole. I say the party starts an hour early. I open 

your window and put a plate of honey on the table. The flies 

take wing and and build houses on your mantelpiece. You 

don’t believe in stars, but I send you a horoscope that reads: 

redemption.         I tell your mother what you did. I don’t beg 

permission or forgiveness. I don’t ask if you’re alright, I just

keep feeding the flies.

Sophie Furlong Tighe is a Drama and Theatre Studies student at Trinity College Dublin. She was once a slam poet, a twice winner of Dublin’s Slam Sunday, and a finalist in the Grand Slam. Now she writes things on pages, and has published in Not Where I Belong and Dodging The Rain.