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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.

they are responsible for my every movement,    inside my body & without, & for the rest of this poem

This is a poem of despair: lungs melting & swallowed

by blackness,by a void legs heavy like leaded- eyes      lifeless, cold-stunned

This is a poem of destruction: dreams, insecurities, & all that is fragile,

are hot ashes under a well- placed foot

This is a poem of frustration: chest boiling, teeth clenching & bleeding. red like the flash in

your eyes

head pulsing, waiting for something      vital to snap

This is a poem of brokenness: arms at unnatural angles,

ribs crumbling, like all the calcium has been drained from the earth & we have been   reduced

to fine powder

This is a poem of denial: lips pulled back inside        the head in an animalistic snarl, refusing to utter a single truth

shoulders locked in survival stance

This is a poem of sickness: owning parts that forget their function, pleading        with God to remind them.  burying your self-worth as low    as it already feels

This is a poem of acceptance: thinking of ways to assemble your fragments like a sick joke        of a jigsaw puzzle

deep breathing, searching     for a will you are sure you once had

This is a poem of hope: lavender sprigs woven   through your fingers, &

placed in your hair

the sun putting his hot hand          on your heart

This is a poem of love: his touch like a wave of      honey, flowing from your clavicle

to your thigh,  highlighting every imperfection on its way; turning them to pure gold & your    heart becomes

a bomb shelter for his soul

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.

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

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.

the chaste woman she recognises the bruises, the cuts, familiar from playground ponytail-tugs. he wants to: she will. an ancient code of silence is glue on her lips, tacky and bitter. she licks. swallows.

the hospitable woman she escapes the party, leaves a worn pair of shoes by the oven in the kitchen. she runs. pine needles and salt prick her soles. about to dip a toe in the longed-for lake water, a faceless voice sends ripples: “no unshaven legs.”