Sweet quarantine

Tell me that this death will not kill me

I can no longer deny the sadness and the tired flight

Of birds that want to go home in winter

I am defeated, still, waiting, stuck, and struggling

Wanting to be brave, leaving behind poetry,

To live in a world of bold acts. Save you,

Balance on a precipice, kiss you,

A dream that seems further away in the light

Of the early hours of the night when I write

Because sleeping feels like giving up

On hope, on love, on God.

I tell myself sweet lies. I watch the news,

I cook the rice the way the package tells you,

I feed the cat, I brush my teeth,

I dread to sleep. Oh but to think that I could love,

To be anywhere but here, the coffin of my home,

Where the days repeat. Numbers on the news,

The prime-minister smiling at the vultures,

You cannot bear the words he speaks,

Wanting to hide, and to sleep

If sleeping means to wake up when it’s all over.

Nightmare in the making. You wake, you work,

You call your mum, you watch TV,

You watch the pile of dishes grow,

Drinking coffee, black and mocha,

Eating forty grams of chocolate

Thinking of something else. Oh my, my.

‘I was thinking of you,’ she said,

‘All alone, at home, indoors.’

‘I thought of you a lot.’