there are always ink stains on her fingers

now i'm twenty three. i still, tucking myself into bed, sometimes wonder what age she wanted to be married by and what it was she hoped would happen afterwards. just before i flick the light switch, i think: let her be married by then. i've seen her nice-looking boyfriend on social media, and i hope he helps her 10-year-old wish come true, whatever it means.

it's just that if i could cry on a train full of strangers, and rest my chin glumly on my hand at work while eating lunch, and sit on grass in sunshine and feel mildly guilty for my happiness - then i'd have scattered my grief beyond our house. that seems like the proper thing to do.

she was a woman of myth, crinkled palms full of anecdotes. if i was to venture out into the city, someone's headscarf or yellow car or a whiff of perfume would spark a memory. my remembering would mark the spot like a pebble upon a tombstone. she deserves to have that map made for her.

The last time we visited my grandma we told her we’d better not hug and she giggled as we touched elbows, my hoodie rubbing against her cashmere, like the gesture was a twerk or dab or some other cool thing kids do these days that she’d never try to understand.

They announce the daily death toll with a smile - a mere triple figure. Oh, lovely. Look at those pretty coloured lines all steady. Let’s take a minute to admire them.

Once visits were banned we still drove to stand outside her care home and wave. “You good or not good?” shouted at her third storey window. For the first few weeks, her grey curls would emerge followed by a weak thumbs-up.

On the Monday, it took her a little longer to appear. On the Tuesday, when she didn’t show, we decided she must be taking a bath and tried not to let our hearts sink as we returned home without a sighting of her.

Is that a slight smirk as he says ventilators are well stocked? Picturing them shining prettily in their abundance on spanking shining new wards, plastic wrapping still intact? No one has had to be turned away from intensive care yet. A success.

On the Wednesday the doctor rang. Said it wasn’t looking good. Said there was no point sending her to hospital because they wouldn’t attach her to a ventilator, those were being saved for the young. Did he have our permission to get the morphine ready, to at least make it a little more gentle?

No point, no point, no point. That echoed round the house as we waited. It seemed a strange, big thing to decide in two minutes over the telephone.

How soon after those wooden doors close do they cave into the urge to pat their own backs?

A few years ago my brother, after a few too many pints, lost his key. Instead of knocking, he climbed up on top of the porch and tried to jump through the open bathroom window. It closed on his fingers and he fell straight onto a pile of scaffolding poles.

The doctor rang and said his leg might need amputating, most of the skin missing, a few ribs broken. A few more things punctured. He might not even make it. My dad didn’t flinch, just raced to the hospital to hold his hand and tell him he was daft. When he came back home a shock had settled behind his eyes but he firmly said he was glad he went.

My dad got asked to say goodbye to his mother at 4am. He sat for the 30 minutes he was permitted with his mask and his gloves and watched her fight for breath like gravel had gotten inside her.

She’d died by 6. Even his second-hand impression around the dining room table was enough to make me more nauseous than any amount of blood. My dad, ever-calm, never phased, wished they hadn’t invited him and had simply rung to say she’d died so he never had to see her like that.

A journalist tries his luck; he’s used up his allotted slot of questions but just before they switch his screen off he asks “Why didn’t you close care homes sooner if you knew in the very first week what a risk they’d pose?”

A gulp. “I think that’s unreasonable as a question, actually.”

My dad used to tease: “You’ll make it to 100, you will - get ready for your telegram”. She joke-pointed at the ceiling like she was telling off God and mumbled “I better bloody not”.

But she also always said: “One day I will go to bed and I won’t wake up” with a kind of peace in her voice and it’s the fact she was robbed of the chance to go quietly in her sleep that stings.

No, but - but - this was the fine line we were walking. Closing care homes sooner would have saved lives. But allowing visits to continue improved residents’ mental health. Kept them cheery.

I’m back from my daily walk, face sweaty, press conference half-finished, my panting breaths half-obscuring the sound. I didn’t think the first few minutes would matter but clearly I missed a news flash. I want to yell to my mum in the other room: Listen to this! They just said - no, no, I know they’ve never cared before but they just said!

Each morning they rise from silk pillows, slip on starched suits and stand praying for their Churchill moment.

I grew into my distrust of politicians around the same time I lost my final baby teeth - but it’s always been a quiet disdain, a roll of the eyes, a shake of the head. Not this red anger. This numb rage. This staggered disbelief that fizzes so loud in my ears  I can’t hear the weatherman predict drizzle. I spit out the line they just tried to feed me and I know years down the line will never forget the shape or the foul taste of it and they can make as many Netflix specials as they want they’ll never completely convey the feeling of it.

“Breaking: Matt Hancock refuses to apologise to relatives of elderly residents who died in care homes.” 

it was library nooks and locker room corners (and yes the occasional perch on the toilet seat, legs crossed so no one would spot or disturb me) because the spare seats seemed to be reserved for backpacks and used dinner trays.

but in all my time spent wandering halls with my head down, looking at the school clock begging the hands to move faster, i never realised

i only needed to ask 

and people would have moved their bags quite happily.

the unspoken rules that seemed like solid brick fade to vapour as i look back.

even the prettiest most popular people who scared me a little would have seen the sadness in my eyes, how i bit my lip to stop me from begging, and moved their hoodies and coats aside to make room for me.

so if you're thirteen, remember

making new friends is not the scandal it seems when you're walking round a school where the same names have been stuck together with superglue since your first day.

friendship bracelets fray and seating plans are meant to be switched and shuffled.

don’t you ever for a second accept lonely lunchtimes as a lifelong punishment. don’t wait like me till after you leave to find out that everyone was fighting a battle you knew nothing about. don’t assume the answer before you’ve asked. seek change and transition until you’ve found the people who make you belly laugh,

i like how you call everything an adventure and swing your brother to the sky

when you turned a supermarket trolley into a rollercoaster ride

you save money for exploring, don’t bother buying me much

besides chocolate from the corner shop and second-hand books

i love the quiet of our midnight coffee and our 2am drives

our linked hands glowing orange in the dashboard light

you roll my eyes at my taste in pop but turn it up louder

and insist i’m prettiest when my hair drips fresh from the shower

i’m normally grouchy in a morning - you’re the only alarm i like

for you i’ll put up with dinner parties, cosy evenings the prize

my mum’s maybe more in love with you than i am and my grandma

saves you clippings from the paper and calls you for crossword answers

someday we’ll make a home where no one ever stifles quiet cries

where full stomachs carry no guilt, and there are more kisses than fights

first thing you hand me breakfast and ask to hear my dream

answer the phone knowing i’ve not got the energy to speak

i’m constantly worrying i’m not worthy, insecurities get in the way

and i draw my own conclusions; but you keep your promise to stay

watching teen movies i never believed the main girl’s story would be mine

i listed my class’s names again - a game of guess who - and giggled when she asked which one was my boyfriend. grandma, boys are stupid.

i hadn’t learned how to be shy yet.

when i got home coca cola fizzed in the gaps between my teeth and my mum scrubbed the chocolate-coated corners of my mouth too hard. i fought her off. what have you been doing, sweetheart.

the world was still my playground and crushes didn’t hurt as much as tarmac grazes and bicycle bruises.

***

when i reached seventeen her house was long-sold and she’d settled into the dusk and fuss of the care home. i patted the creases out of her duvet after visiting and kept the secret of liking girls so close to my chest it tickled my lungs and wound round my ribs.

she told me the name of my cousin’s new boyfriend and asked when are you getting one of those? i laughed and rolled my eyes and said i’d prefer a pet.

i knew it was a joke, her myth about noses, that the itch came from dust rising in a room of  too many memories and years without movement.

but up late lit by blue light i stalked the photos of the girl i wanted and wondered if by any chance it’s true do you feel me think of you?

***

twenty two now. my grandma is gone and it wasn’t the sobs and grand ceremonies i thought but a quiet emptying of plant pots, bagging up clothes. and i’ve blissfully forgotten the girl with the golden hair who moved half-way across the globe.

i have a little cry clutching the granite kitchen surface - i’m making a cake, something to do with my hands - when it sinks in my grandma will never meet the girl i’m now dating. two women of fire and quick wit and kindness.

have you ever known love to come with conditions? had to google-check which countries your love makes off-limits?

when fragile masks start to shatter these found-groups are the glue. do you know the shuddering courage of spitting out the truth?

somewhere there’s a graveyard for lost childhoods, teenage years full of hollowness and wrongness and desperation to fit in.

there are methods to correct us, stones and therapy and fists, ears turn deaf as we explain we always did and always will exist.

on high streets big brands console us with bright window displays while on bus-tops we get bloody noses for daring to say

we’re not your entertainment, find your porn somewhere else, we’re people - if you’d let us we’d love to quietly be ourselves,

Read the original on StayingHome - a site for creative responses to lockdown.

I never knew how to explain to people

That at fourteen my greatest fear was that the world outside wasn’t real.

That windows lied to me.

That with a background of the TV’s droning I became convinced the rest of the world had ceased to exist.

That the spiked heads of trees and lazy clouds split between each plastic pane were as fake as the pixels on my phone screen.

That my dad, getting ready to roar at the football, that my mum, getting ready to dip a toe into a steaming bath, that I, highlighter poised getting ready to revise, were the world’s only centre of gravity. Sole inhabitants of a planet that started and ended with the ivy fronds that hugged the house. My house, with its cracked plaster and creaking floorboards, simply floating on its foundations.

Beyond the old aching walls nothing but

Total

Utter

Complete

Empty

Blackness. Maybe a flickering star or two, if you squinted. A planet, looming, too distant to be noticed, our one and only neighbour.

I couldn’t describe the rising, heart-thudding, breath-stealing panic that led me stumbling towards the window to wrench the handle and double check the street and sky were still there.

So when they asked me my biggest fear, I mostly just said spiders.

-

Once, after five double rum and cokes, I attempted to tell a blind date. He blinked and laughed and said “Steady on, Black Mirror. I’d quite like to sleep tonight.”

I tried a second time, a Saturday afternoon: “Mum.” A towel corner tucked in her armpit, hair askew and dripping. “Mum.”

“Mm?” Half-listening.

“Do you ever think… do you ever feel like the outside is fake? Like views are a sticker you could peel away?”

For that I got a pat on the head and a chuckle. “Always had an overactive imagination, haven’t you, love.”

–

It’s happening again. Of course. That’s what this is – one last attempt. I’d have started with the dictionary definition of the phobia but I’ve Googled and never found it.

It makes sense. My teenage years were a kind of semi-voluntary quarantine. Isolation imposed by few friends and anxiety and a love of reading.

Week three of lockdown I rush to my window, throat constricted.

A ginger cat pads over to a strip of sunlight on the tarmac of my driveway, close to the curb. Green eyes like marbles. Licks its paw then curls into itself, getting ready to sleep in the afternoon heat.

I take two deep breaths of that definitely-real air. In, out. Sit back down. I’m more quickly and easily convinced that my mind’s playing tricks on me now.

Amongst the birdsong there’s the clang of wooden spoons against saucepans.

The news tells me there are rainbows Blu-tacked to windows. My mum tells me there are grandsons living with grannies, slow-dancing round their living rooms. My phone tells me baths are becoming botched hair salons and punters are cheers-ing to online pub quizzes. My friends tell me in a few months’ time we’ll meet and lick mint-choc-chip ice cream and dip our toes in busy lakes and lie back on sun-soaked blankets.

And I’m forced to admit:

My imagination is good, yes.

Read the original on StayingHome - a site for creative responses to lockdown.

Grandma was twenty-two when the last Doodlebugs dropped over Hull and blackout curtains began to twitch. Her days spent bent double over factory lines, attaching fins to bombs.

Now she tells her carers off for wasting three good tea bags on cuppas for her visitors when one would do the trick; can recite two-ingredient cake recipes. Jumps when a car backfires. Keeps her one black and white photo of her husband in uniform in a small gold frame on her windowsill.

–

We get in the car – just me and dad, mum left at home, ‘case we pass a police van and they don’t agree with our definition of essential – drive past joggers and displaced supermarket queues and pull up outside grandma’s nursing home.

We stand on the street, the vowels of my dad’s “hello” echoing down the cobbles,

As we wave.

And wave.

And blink against the sun.

Her grey curls rise dimly into view, obscured by the tinted glass and distanced by her zimmer frame.

“You good?” dad shouts – a thumbs-up aimed towards her third-story window. “Or not good?” – a thumbs down.

She’s only given us thumbs up.

So far.

We stay and smile for a bit.

The car doors click and we drive home again.

–

I’m twenty-two as the world goes into lockdown and men half-hidden behind wooden podiums tell us how to work and shop and live. My days spent bent double over my laptop typing “these uncertain times” into the umpteenth Mailchimp email.

On the way home from my grandma’s I wonder if any bombs covered with her fingerprints lie quietly sleeping under German soil. Or if anyone seventy years from now will discover the blogs full of shit poetry I’ve strewn across the Internet.

I wonder if, in my own care home, I’ll flinch when two men shake hands on the telly, tell off the carer for ignoring the wrists and thumbs when she washes her hands. If I’ll be still as careful when pouring flour, handwash, olive oil. I wonder how strange it would be if the last words I speak to her are not even words but gestures in a sign language foreign to both of us.

–

Every so often I’m ashamed of this generation. I can’t comprehend the shapes change has taken.

i wish we all hid a little less.

i wish there were fewer coffee shop tables with single empty seats.

i wish people short of 10p change for the bus didn't have to step off, shamefaced, and wait for the next.

i wish crossword clues could be puzzled over by a group of fellow library-goers.

i wish self-conscious girls in changing rooms could be met with a chorus of compliments, strangers' heads peeping out from curtains.

i wish the flood of footsteps leaving a cinema or a stadium was intermingled with excited chatter - wasn't it so good? don't you feel better?

i wish we went about with the honest, giddy openness of drunk girls in club toilets.

i wish checkout queues and train carriages and waiting rooms were louder. i wish passing smiles were brighter. i wish twitter was kinder.

i wish talking was never taboo or strange or out of place.

i wish reaching out was standard and it was simpler to find someone to listen. i wish sadness wasn't such a well-kept secret.

sometimes writer's block isn't "i have all these great ideas i just can't get onto paper".

sometimes the block occurs a little deeper, a little closer to the heart than the fingertips, is more like "nothing feels poetic anymore".

you have to craft a draft of every text you send and even that feels like too much effort.

there are people following you for the magic you once spun out of words but right now a sentence would be a miracle.

you've never had a lover to mould into a muse so you settled for skylines, pink sunsets, the girl you wish you'd had enough of in the first place to have the right to call it "loss".

tripping over your clumsy half-formed feminist thoughts and trying to transcribe anxiety so maybe a couple more people could half-understand.

but i think you bled the words out of even those things, darling. you left them dry and tossed them aside along with the crumpled pages.

here's the secret. it's ok. the dam seems empty for now - the block is hidden somewhere you can't sense it. there's a whole storm behind it.

the trick is to keep writing.