Years mutate virus-like in their determination and, before we know it, only our last conversation remains, hanging in the air like a note from a bass guitar that we know must end. We each had our perspectives, memories and photographs the only proof of friendship, all that’s left of us, my friend. That’s why I […]
Unblurring the View
Days blur into each other. The view from the window seems to stay the same: green leaves pattern blue sky, occasionally a cloud drifts or a helicopter murmurs by, a tractor trundles down a lane, sometime later it returns again. A knock at the door relieves the mundane Monday repetition, a gloved delivery with distance […]
A Place to Catch my Breath
Before the virus, when the world was busy, I fantasised about a secret folly in a corner of the garden hidden by trees, a place where I could catch my breath and let my imagination run free. I envisaged gargoyles on the corners of the roof to ward off unwelcome visitors, and an ornate lantern […]
A World of Order
I like lists and ticking off items when complete, the regularity of paving stones beneath my feet, avoiding cracks and walking firmly in the squares, so as not to be eaten by predatory bears. I like to peg laundry neatly on a washing line, different coloured pegs for your clothes and mine. I like arranging […]
Batty
Against the fading sunset light, small phantoms of the night circle and dip, bat-blind to the predicament of humankind. They are still free to gather and fly, flickering shadows in the sky, while we hunker in isolation, watching the planet’s devastation. Kim M. Russell, 14th April 2020 My response to earthweal weekly challenge: Connecting […]
Cloak of Invisibility
When the clock strikes midnight, will she vanish out of sight, a squashed pumpkin, a shattered glass slipper, a homeless, friendless Cinderella? Cloaked in the nightclub’s anonymity, dancing in the dark, caressed by strobe lights, she relished her invisibility, touched someone else’s damp skin, caught a glimpse of other people’s lives. But outside, on the […]
No One Left and No One Came
She’d been on a retreat in the middle of nowhere: no television, radio, internet or signal on her phone. She rose and retired with the sun, wrote until lunchtime, and walked in the afternoons. She’d watched a lark rise in the March sky and a falcon dive into gorse. She talked to trees and picked […]
Thirteen Squared
Remember all the lies, belittling stares, derisive laughter, heat of scarlet shame, a wake that followed after preserved in ink, the aspic of the literati picking on the bones of every poet at the feast? You hoped they’d disappear, stuffed-shirted corpses, gilt with attitude and privilege, but no, their breath still lingers, the cloying scent […]
Between the Shelves
She wrote him a ballad between the Classics and the Poetry shelves in the public library, inhaling papery pheromones. She spotted his shadowy figure between periodicals and autobiography, held her breath to stop the erratic timpani of her heart and the blood-red symphony surging in her ears. The poem slipped from her sweaty fingers, drifted […]
Sullen
After countless years and so many sullen stars, we yearn for sparkling seas, fast running rivers, snowy mountain tops and vast green plains on our home planet beyond the moon. We have longed to escape the monotones of this metal box: utilitarian grey and brown, the tasteless sustenance, our heads blown by shifting body fluids, […]
writing in north norfolk 