How to Survive Lockdown

 
The third Sunday
and you have moved the furniture
around in your head so many times that
there's nothing new to think.
 
Your brain burns
hot and broken, a computer fan,
washed your hands to
chapped slabs.
Heard a radio programme say
that the unicorn horns were
brown tusks,
the death toll beats,
the bells outside go with no one
ringing them.
You miss your mother.
The world whirrs like a computer fan.
 
So the next right thing is to make your bed.
The next right thing is to make lunch.
The next right thing is to phone her.
The next right thing is to find a future
and believe it wholly.
The next right thing is to make hope
and to stoke it. To strike it
against your bones, your breath
until it catches fire.

By Phoebe Nicholson