Caroline Shepherd
Post-Lockdown Comedown
I do not feel well-adjusted thanks for asking!
Everything is shit and I want to eat a sour squirm and writhe around in ancient agony
Instead of boring modern agony where I’m always a little bit wondering where I left my phone
There’s no point here stop looking!
I’m wrung out by the dumb pandemic and the first utterly irredeemable haircut of my life
Which cost $20 and looks like I’m wearing several hats of my own hair on top of one another
No mind! Strange fades eventually
Even the lockdown lost a bit of its weird sheen when a friend told me, looking at Ashley Bloomfield,
That ‘Dr.’ was short for ‘Daddy’, so now I have to die knowing that was said to me
Then again, strange fades but I never did get over how State Highway One looked in level 4
I still look at old photos online of that industrial lake pouring out in silence
Like we’d built it on the moon and left, which honestly sounds like something we’d do
Then again if I ever feel too unmoored I just have to look at the accompanying Herald article
Which has inevitably spelt road with two ‘d’s’ because they fired all the copy editors,
And then I’m right back to myself, in modern agony, wondering how to sue Just Cuts
Siân hannah
You should know that you’re every good thing and only love should come your way
like a swarm of bees or covid
Super full on and intense only in like a love way
You cry in all movies and took your coat off before putting out that fire I started once
I talk all the time and am basically a real-life sim because you have to tell me
what to wear and how to get anywhere
But you don’t mind because you like the sims anyway and were born good
Sick with it actually, you wish every telemarketer well and mean it
I like you big time and forever, no take backs
You and me till the toilet stops singing, till josh two and I agree, till you make a bad mac and cheese
Which is to say you and me till the end of time cause those things will never happen
I love you so much. You’re so good I barely believe it. You don’t think so but that’s okay because I know, and I’m going to convince you. I really will. After all it’s you and me forever. I’ve got time.
Caroline Shepherd is still trying to get a dumb BA, but in the meantime has been published in Mimicry, Starling and Stasis. She doesn't mind doing the dishes but absolutely cannot abide mopping.