“Long Distance” by Aoife Riach

On our first date
we talked about the self-help books we’d read
little manuals for being a person
 
and all the things
Buffy and Angel could have done
outside of penetrative sex
 
that would have kept them both ensouled
and ticking over and
they could have worked it out apart from that
 
the whole nocturnal thing
seems silly to us now
you and I know there’s always pockets
between day and night
 
where love fits when it’s wanted
even if it burns a little
even if one of you is always
squinting in the light.

—–

Aoife Riach is a feminist witch from Ireland with an MA in Gender & Women’s studies and a postgrad certificate in Sexuality & Sexual Health Education. She has worked as a writer for BUST magazine in NYC and her poetry and fiction appear in College Green Journal, Nothing Substantial and other magazines. She was a finalist in the 2019 Intervarsity Poetry Slam and was a 2019 Irish Writers Centre Young Writer Delegate. Her poem “Vancouver” was chosen for Hungering, the latest curation of the Poetry Jukebox currently installed at EPIC, The Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin.