A Taste of Honey

Sophie Furlong Tighe

I learned to drink boiling water in a Greek hotel room. 

They left us one free teabag and we reused it until I couldn’t.. anymore

so Alex brought me paper cups of freshly boiled water  

to melt the swell in my throat. 

The heat cut a space for the words stuck at the bottom of my stomach- 

Side effects of bulimia nervosa can include severe throat aches.

-I want my teeth back.

-Consult your doctor immediately. 

-I want her back.

He passed me another cup and I whispered 

thank                 you. 

The morning my grandfather died I tried to make a bowl of instant noodles

but spilt water on the skin between my thumb and my forefinger and they

burned and screamed and blistered so I had to spend the next two hours

with my fingers stretched apart from each other. 

When we got home me and Alex sat in his apartment listening to The

Barbara Streisand Album 

He made me a cup of hot water and I told him:

I think am falling in love with her again and I do not know what to do.

He walked to the table and poured the cup over my good left hand, and

said: 

Remember

I wanted to shout: 

But instead, I wrapped a tea towel around my new hand, wiped his counter

dry,

and sang, 

Oh, I will return, yes, I will return

I'll come back (she'll come back)

For the honey 

(and me)

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.