Republicofireland

Through the car window I see her. Silhouetted in cardboard cutout black and clouds of backwards smoke against an ash sky, elegantly draped across the front seat like a curtain with all the creases. She draws on the cigarette, clutches it. I watch her breathe it in, her whole body drawn like an ironing board, neck of a forgotten princess and bones of glass. She throws it back out the window, kissing it goodbye as it tiptoes past her stained lips. Her hand is a clothes peg hanging over the door, little dear in its grasp. Her blueberry veins tip cobwebs over her parchment skin like ink, scribbling secrets I'll never know. She purses her butte