Sample poems from ‘The Elephant In The Corner’ (www.tall-lighthouse.co.uk) I will survive As long as I know how to love, course it’s tacky, heartbreak is a tacky, messy business and if you never sat on the edge of a sink, in a ladies’ loo, in some dodgy night club bawling your eyes out while your best mates and total strangers put their arm round you saying he’s a bastard, don’t worry about it love then you haven’t lived. And real friends are the ones who are still there at four in the morning holding your hair out of your eyes as you crouch over the toilet bowl, puking your guts up in-between long complicated tales of Michael or Sean or David or whatever his name is whose the reason you haven’t bothered to ring them for the past three months. And they listen to you with the patience of all the saints put together until this song comes on, when they haul you on to the dance floor, pouring still more vodka and Red Bull down your throat, and no matter how sophisticated you think you are, you will discover you know all the words and that maybe you won’t slit your wrists over him after all because as long as there are glitter balls and pumping music and friends to put you comatose into the taxi home you’ll be all right. From ‘The Elephant In The Corner’ (www.tall-lighthouse.co.uk) by Aoife Mannix. See Aoife's details in Poet's Profile on this website.