The snow came down on a Wednesday night, the kind that makes Dublin look innocent for about six hours before it turns to grey slush and trouble. I live on a small…

I had been a mother for seventeen days when I learned that crying in public feels different from crying at home. At home, the walls know you. The kettle knows you. The…

I worked as the caretaker in a small secondary school on the north side for nearly nineteen years. I won’t name it, because the school is still there and the children are…

I met Martin outside St. James’s Hospital on a wet Tuesday morning when Dublin looked like it had been rinsed and left on the line too long. I had just finished my…

I was twenty-nine when the call came in from Stoneybatter, and I remember thinking, in the foolish way you do before a bad thing shows its face, that I’d still make it…

I was nine the first time I walked into Mr. Kavanagh’s café with no money. It was a narrow place off Dublin’s northside, not far from the bus stop where my mother…

The first coat belonged to my daughter, Maeve, and it was far too small for her. Red, with a missing button and a hood shaped like a little bear’s head. She was…

I first noticed her because she was always there before the kettle boiled. I was working as a healthcare assistant in a ward near the old side of the Mater, doing the…

I was thirteen when I learned that kindness can be quiet. Not the sort that arrives with speeches or a photograph for the school newsletter, but the sort that slips in through…