It started with hopscotch, a stone and squares,
a way to pass the time waiting for your mother,
you, convinced you could put everything
into the neat categories they were once in,
meticulously counting with your feet every square
on the cobble without trespassing a line,
without tripping into the tiny interstitial dykes.
You tested your balance on the diagonals
hopped on every odd number, criss-crossed your legs
into the most restricted spaces, keeping your nerve
when you were out of breath, holding out on those fractals of fate
as you made your way, tippy-toe onto the smallest square
you imagined in the centre.
This is how you tested those inevitable consequences
as dark descended on the quiet waters of the mall,
the rooks about to startle from the Angelus bells
and become black angels from hell rising victorious
from the trees, distorting that square on which you landed
into a dark rectangle into which your father fell
while Michael, Raphael and Uriel were asleep.

Mary Madec is the director of the Villanova Education Abroad Programme in Ireland. She won the Hennessy XO Prize in 2008 and subsequently published two collections with Salmon Poetry (In Other Words, 2010 and Demeter Does Not Remember, 2014).