It’s quite a thing,
living together in the same house
for the first time during contagion.
The designation’s three miles up the road.
Our singleton cargo’s humbling in its
mundanity, like pulp fiction discovered
on your shelf, or being caught in a lie.
The boxes, chairs, cups, condiments go out
like hopeful envoys through a shuttered
town. If anything says it, doesn’t this?
Advancing through the suburbs to our target,
we rummage for alien keys, hang
your suit jackets on the rail, make
the first cup of tea, then lock ourselves away.
No one observes us. I unfurl
a white sheet from our front window.
On it are the words, “I cannot separate my
life or joy from yours”, and it is true.
Outside the spring-visiting swallows loop,
all freedom – fresh from their sojourn from Sahara
to Morocco, through the chasmic
Pyrenees, and darting a course over
Western France, sun and salt-beaten.
They might have died in crossing. God –
how simply it seems
to be done; how miraculously unlikely it has
come to be!
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Fiona is a writer and producer based in London.
Latest posts by Fiona Brown (see all)
- The Incomers - 22nd November 2020
Heartening and positive message in these difficult times.x