Tea break
Spilt from my morning tea, a pink drop sits on my white desk. I dip my finger into it and drag the watery skin into starfish formation. Dust from days of staring at my computer screen swims in the liquid. An eye lash sticks out one end.
I blink.
Light from my desk lamp is reflected on the glistening surface, a brief glimmer under my hand. I squash it, now too wet to resume typing on my keyboard. What a relief!
I love the smell of red berry on my palm and decide to tip some more tea into it. It streams between my fingers onto sheets of paper scattered all over my desk. Pools form, rivulets run between lines of print, start dripping onto the floor.
Tea seeps into the white sheep skin under my feet: a wounded look. I kick it aside and make space for a free run. Splashes on the floor remind me of childhood games: naked, covered in soapy bath water, sliding full body – with gusto! – on tiled ground to the other side of the room.
Here it ends. The room in which I write. Four walls that hold me tight. As I fill, day after day, with images on screen of people who cannot remember their childhood anymore. Because they are dead. Because they got Covid and very ill. And died in rooms shielded and sanitised, alone.
I pour more tea, let blood flow, stomp in the mess on the wooden floor. To break ranks with my orderly life right now and applaud the souls that have passed through it all.
127,691 of them,
on this land where I stand today.
Annette Schwalbe is a writer and creative arts psychotherapist in Somerset.
Website: www.annetteschwalbe.co.uk