Happiness

by Roisin Connolly

My Happiness tastes like Christmas morning 

Overwhelming, sweet and warm.

My happiness looks like hundreds of people

Laughing and celebrating all night long.

My happiness smells like warm sweet tea 

With a lingering taste of bitter lemon.

My happiness feels like Sunday mornings 

Half asleep and wrapped in blankets.

My happiness sounds like a crowded room

Full of laughter, chat and song.

My laughter is compromised

With war, destruction and death.

It breaks my heart to see it now 

On the daily news.

Shed my tears for those 

That live in fear.

It breaks my heart 

For we know the pain 

Of war. 

Written by Roisin Connolly, as part of Poetry as Commemoration workshops led by Terry McDonagh, in Castlerea Community School, Roscommon, in  November 2022. Transition Year students were invited to write a poem in response to Terry McDonagh’s poem ‘My Freedom One Hundred Years Later’, written in commemoration of the War of Independence.