Lockdown Lines
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This month, I entered the Lockdown Prize run by Fish Publishing and had no luck at all — not surprising given the calibre of the work submitted and my own mediocrity in this field. I’m beginning to think that short-form fiction is not my forte. Not surprising given that I’m the kind of person who never uses one word when 17 will do. Still, it kept me off the streets for a few hours and gave me something to think about other than what to cook for dinner, whether I’m bored enough yet to clean the skirting boards, the stunning ineptitude of our government and whether I will ever have the house to myself again so that I can take a sneaky nap. (I could, of course, take a nap now. My family are not monsters, but then … the guilt. See below).
The pieces that were shortlisted for the Lockdown Prize are brilliant. Some inventive poetry and short prose with interesting takes on what lockdown has meant to the different writers. You can find the shortlist here: https://www.fishpublishing.com/2020/07/02/lockdown-prize-131-best/
My efforts are below. No great shakes but they say something about how I’ve perceived what’s been happening since March. To quote my teens: I’m not gonna lie, it’s been a long few months. I’ve been trying to work on my fourth novel but I find myself easily distracted. It’s that familiar merry-go-round of guilt: there’s always something to do that’s seems more useful than making stuff up; you feel bad for not spending more time with your children (who if truth be told are probably delighted to be left to their own devices); you feel bad because everyone is eating cereal for lunch – again; you feel bad because you never got around to making the Lockdown Scrapbook despite ordering the book itself in early April in a fever of Pollyanna-can-do-ism.
I’m an Irish Catholic, so I’m a dab hand at the whole guilt thing. It’s just that Lockdown has racheted it up a few notches. That plus trying to write a new book: I’d forgotten how daunting it is; how difficult it is to silence the Doubt long enough to get the words down; how hard it is to persuade yourself that what you’re doing is worth your time when there are so many other demands. And yet, like all writers, I press on. Most days, it’s like trudging through treacle with a donkey on your back but hey, that’s the gig. And some days are better and that’s what we’re here for.
As Lockdown drags on and the uncertainty persists, it’s hard to keep finding the joy in every day. My teenagers and husband help enormously. There is still a lot of laughter; a lot of lively debates and some stunning rows that are very funny in retrospect. Or at least, I’m sure they will be. We’ve also had some lovely evenings in the park, counting our blessings and enjoying the sight of children playing barefoot on the sun-dappled grass. That’s something you don’t get in the pub.
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So for what it’s worth, here are some Lockdown Lines. A piece of short fiction and a poem, of sorts.
Refraction
There are rainbows in the windows and my children’s eyes grow wide at the thought of all those pots of gold.
“What will everyone do with all that money, Mummy?”
It’s a good question.
I tell them that the pots might not just hold gold but other kinds of riches.
“Jewels, Mummy? Diamonds and sparkly crowns and pearls?”
I ask them to think harder. To imagine other precious things.
“Love?” asks the youngest.
Because at five years of age, love is often the answer.
“Yes, love and time and health and happiness.”
“And lollipops, Mummy?”
“Yes, lollipops. Always lollipops.”
——–
End of the Line
“All change! This train terminates here.”
We were speeding along, careless contrails unspooling behind us
In the particle-spiked air.
We glazed at our beeping hands and did not see the landscape changing
From field to flood, from drylands to desert
Until the brakes squealed.
We look up, abruptly untethered. We did not expect this.
A girl in plaits and a man in a white coat mutter: “We did tell you. We did.”
And they file glumly down the aisle.
I disembark and wander the streets but I do not recognise this place.
The shops are shuttered, the markets closed.
Everyday highwaymen with plastic hands shy away from me.
I enter a park where the cherry blossoms fall like snow. I remember this
But the birds seem louder. A fox suns itself like a smug cat in a daffodil-doughnut.
Another street and there are rainbows in the windows of this inside-out world.
A man crosses the road on sorry-sorry feet.
I cannot see his face but his hands wave a smile.
And then I see it. I am standing outside my house.
This is where I live, after all.
—–
