This evening on the island is full of promise. I believe my son when he comes to tell me if I wire €9,000 to his bookie, he’ll never make another bet. Cross my heart and hope to die, Ma. There will be no payment demand, no bar fight, no threatening the Guards as the cuffs come on. This evening on the island is full of promise. There is only the sea and the cliffs. I take my son’s hand and together we watch the waves dip and the sheep find their way home. As he hugs goodbye I know he’ll be with me at sunrise. There will be no ambulance, no toxicology report, no cremation. This evening on the island is full of promise. Up ahead I see my son, his phone illuminating the path. This time I will reach him before he disappears, cross my heart and hope to die.

Roberta Beary

is the haibun editor of Modern Haiku, the co-editor of Wishbone Moon: An Anthology of Haiku by Women (Jacar Press, 2018), and the author of three award-winning poetry collections, including The Unworn Necklace, which received a finalist book award from the Poetry Society of America. Her collection of prose poetry, Deflection (Accents Publishing, 2015), was named a National Poetry Month Best Pick by Washington Independent Review of Books.

Her writing has appeared in Rattle, KYSO Flash, 100 Word Story, Cultural Weekly, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and is also featured in A Companion to Poetic Genre (John Wiley & Sons, 2011) and Haiku In English: The First Hundred Years (W. W. Norton, 2013).

Roberta Beary identifies as gender-expansive and writes to connect with the disenfranchised. She lives in the west of Ireland with her husband, Frank Stella, and tweets her photoku and micro-poetry on Twitter [at] shortpoemz.

Author’s website: https://robertabeary.com/news/

You can also find her on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/robertabeary/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ The art of brevity, an interview by Ciara Moynihan in Mayo News (22 January 2019)

⚡ Lunch Break, a haibun by Beary in Rattle (#56, Summer 2017), Tribute to Poets with Mental Illness; includes audio (17 July 2017)

⚡ Barfly, one of more than a dozen of Beary’s works which appear in KYSO Flash; for a list of others, see the KF Index of Contributors.