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I’m stuck, like a windless cloud,
as uninspired as my thin, uncut, uncoloured hair.
For now, all I can do
is mourn the loss of our Eavan Boland.
He’s hauled the vacuum cleaner up the stairs
and the rest is up to me. I could go out,
get Vitamin D. But the robin’s perching
on the stone swan, so I figure the garden
is his domain for the moment.
Stare at the screen instead, fingering
the goose-bumps rising up on my nape.
In the workshop now, Michael’s charring
his eleventh wooden carving, a subconscious
odyssey, which is coming to represent a hazardous
waste facility, or the state of his teeth.
No dentist for the duration. Doing, he says,
keeps me from fixing on the pain. And I know
it’ll distract me, too, from trawling through
the latest updates. I decide to grab a bite
for energy first. But we’ve run out of bread
and there’s no more chocolate. Just a pair
of speckled bananas in the table bowl on the brink
of a journey to the bin for organic waste.
So I take the sorry-looking fruit into the kitchen,
cleaving to each other like the couple
in Eavan’s Quarantine, rummage
for coconut oil and nuts and the rest,
and hey presto, after thirty
minutes or so, a banana loaf.
Afric McGlinchey
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