If you died tomorrow
What would you want them all to know?

That you loved having to conform?
That you appreciated the need to be the same?
That you were grateful for the chance to feel self conscious about your body?

No

You would tell them that you hated them
Their words
Both said
And unsaid
You hated their eyes
Looking
Judging
Never understanding

You would tell them that you found your place on earth
That you found your heaven
A place where love was real
Where friends laughed
Where people mattered
Not for clothes, hair, status, or money
But for the sole sake of being people

You would tell them that you were happy
And they still found a way to ruin it
And you hate them for it

Wandered I to that ancient place
found your footprint upon the shore,
sea meeting sky and sky meeting earth
the scent of your passing upon the wind.

Thaisteal mé go dtí an áit sin ársa
Fuair ​​do lorg ar an gcladach,
spéir cruinniú farraige agus spéir domhain cruinnithe
an boladh de do rite ar an ghaoth.

Cried your name through whispering glen
spoke to Holy Oaks and brooding pines,
nights growing long and the days unkind
only ever traces of you could I find.

*D'ainm trí ghleanna
Labhair le Naofa agus goradh,
oícheanta fás fada agus na laethanta
ach riamh rianta de tú raibh mé in ann a aimsiú.

Being a writer
Is not a part-time job,
Like being a nurse
Or a teacher:
Where clocking in
And out
Is as simple
As lifting and putting down
A pen.

No,
Writers have words
Flowing though their veins;
Poignant thoughts and emotions
Shape and reshape themselves
Into poems in the writer's mind
Almost by instinct.

But
Do not be fooled:
The writer's world
Is no paradise:
Thoughts tug at our brains
In the middle of the night,
Like a child pulling
At its mother's coat
Beckoning us to the page
Where finally we free the thoughts
That have been held captive.

And finally with sleepy,
Satisfied eyes,
We place the final fullstop
On our latest masterpiece
.