I am so tired of going to the supermarket for a treat.

Somehow, it gets to 3pm on a Wednesday and I haven’t been outside. I have: been on 7 Zoom calls, fed the cat, done 50 bicycle sit-ups looking at the crack in my ceiling but I haven’t

Seen the sun. Or anyone, except my husband

Who leaves at 8am and catches an empty train to somewhere he’d rather not be. 

I keep losing my masks even though I go nowhere. I am losing my mind because I’m

Going nowhere. Yesterday, I bought a neon orange blouse because it reminds me of who I used to be. The drifts of leaves are gone, there is decay in the gutter, and

There is only winter left of 2020, the cold dregs of a year I did not anticipate,

We did not anticipate this. 

The cat panics when I leave the house. She spends the whole time mewling at the door, and when I come back she paws at the outside world, cries at my absence

And then bites my feet. 

I used to make an effort and now I don’t. I wear mismatched socks and slippers I wear

The same pair of black leggings I wear

The same three red jumpers and, most of the time, a dressing gown. 

An old house, a cracked house was OK when I spent so much of my time under other roofs. I have spent the whole of 2020 romancing birds. First I won the pigeons, and then the crows, and then the robins, and now one Great Tit, 

But mostly I have made one squirrel very fat. I can see the ivy growing. I can see it gaining length as I lose days. Every day there is one less minute of sun.