He Married My Sister but Loved Me First
I was twenty-four when I met Ciarán outside a late bus stop on Dame Street, both of us half-soaked from rain and pretending we weren’t freezing. He offered me the last dry…
The Most Beautiful Goodbye Happened at Howth Harbour
I used to think goodbyes were supposed to happen in airports, with bad coffee, heavy bags, and people pretending not to cry until the last possible second. I never imagined mine would…
The Woman Who Changed My Life in One Weekend
I met her on a Friday evening when I was trying very hard to disappear. I had just been made redundant from a job I never admitted I hated, and my girlfriend…
I Didn’t Believe in Soulmates Until I Lost Mine
I used to think soulmates were a thing people said when they wanted ordinary love to sound holy. I believed in timing, effort, patience, paying rent on time, remembering how someone takes…
The Wedding Speech That Ended Two Relationships
I was thirty-one when I learned that a wedding speech can be more dangerous than a confession booth. It happened in Dublin, on a wet Saturday in October, the kind of day…
She Read My Diary and Left Forever
I used to keep a diary in the bottom drawer of our bedside locker in Stoneybatter, under old ESB bills and a scarf she had once lent me and never asked back…
I Loved Someone Who Never Even Knew My Name
I first saw her on a wet Tuesday morning at Pearse Station, the kind of morning where Dublin looks like it has been dipped in grey paint and left to dry badly.…
The Night We Chose Each Other Instead of Our Partners
I used to think love ended with a slammed door or a dramatic confession, but mine began ending beside the smoking area of Whelan’s on a wet Thursday night, with someone else’s…
He Never Stopped Loving His First Love
My father was seventy-eight when I found the shoebox under his bed. I had gone to his little house in Cabra to clear out a leak-stained wardrobe after a bad winter, and…
The Secret Affair That Lasted Longer Than My Marriage
I met Ciarán two weeks before my wedding, which is a terrible sentence to write and a worse thing to have lived. It was raining so heavily that afternoon on Grafton Street…