I used to think love was proved by waiting. Waiting for a text back, waiting outside a pub in the rain, waiting for someone to become the person they were on the…

For nearly four months, every Thursday evening after work, I met the same woman on the number 46A just outside Dublin city centre. I was working in an office near Leeson Street…

I met Ciarán when we were both nineteen and pretending to be harder than we were. It was outside a house party in Phibsborough, raining sideways, and he gave me the dry…

I met Ciarán outside Whelan’s on a wet Thursday when we were both twenty-two and pretending we had somewhere better to be. I had lost my friends in the crowd, he had…

I kept his key on my ring for eleven months after he left. It was a small brass thing, warmer in colour than the others, cut for a red door in Stoneybatter…

He said it outside The Long Hall on a wet Thursday evening, with rain shining on the red paint of the pub and the buses hissing past like tired animals. “Give me…

I used to think love announced itself with certainty. A look across a room, a hand reached out at exactly the right moment, music rising somewhere in the background. By thirty-nine, I…