The overhead light flickers insistently. A faint buzzing like a trapped bee is the only sound in the empty classroom. I’ve just finished marking the last of the essays, all thirty of them. Two exam questions on solitude in Emily Dickinson’s poetry, with reference to five poems. The church on Rathmines Road bells the hour. Six. My hand cramps from holding my pen. This is the first time I’ve stayed late since I started, but I don’t want to go home. The emptiness of the house has grown around me, pulled me close. My East Village apartment, where I’ve lived alone for six years, has never seemed as vacant as the three storeys of red-bricked Victorian terrace that my mother threw my way. Staying on in school stretches the day out, lessens the time that I must spend alone at home. I crave New York. Flashes of what I’m missing out on catch me at moments when I least expect it. Flowers in barrels at the Korean market on the Lower East Side.
