#atinylife harmony

If you sing the tune it doesn’t mean you can never harmonise.

If you sing harmonies it doesn’t mean you can’t ever sing the tune.

If you sing the tune

it’s not that the tune is ‘right’

and harmonies are ‘wrong.’

If you sing a passing note it doesn’t matter,

because it resolves,

and what’s it got to do with anyone else anyway?

If you sing, it’s not a phase, it’s part of who you are,

even if you haven’t sung since you were seventeen.

If you sung harmonies, then stopped, sang the tune for the rest of your life,

it is part of what you are. It is part of your history. Why would you want to erase your own exploration?

Listen to the richness of the sound around you.

Listen to the richness of the people around you.

#atinylife WillowWhite

I was talking to a friend the other day (online, of course, because Covid), and the subject of Willow Tree ornaments came up.

Remember those?

I don’t know if it was a worldwide thing, but for a while, everyone in the UK had AT LEAST one. We had three, back in the day.

Anyway, I sent the link to Zoom chat, and she said: ‘Oh yeah. They are really white, aren’t they?’

And here is where I call myself out.

For not realising this, at all. For never considering how these ornaments are made a facsimile, not of ‘every man (women or child)’ but actually ‘every white man (women or child).’ For not realising that being able to recognise myself in those faceless ornaments meant that other people would be made to feel other, different. Again.

This. Is. White. Privilege.

#atinylife wisewords

Lockdown, kids, school, bullying…

all fading away now as I listen to your

wise words, your tone steeped in kindness, experience and love,

as you tell me I am doing everything I can

to keep everything balanced –

all these plate-spun needs

crashing down in a pile of sad children

and distant partner, (and cat that still needs to go to the vet)

and am I thinking about my own needs, my own self?

Your friendship saturates this digital space

between us – the space hollowed out between

me and you, and you, and you – without these electrical signals,

these sound waves,

how alone would all of us be feeling, now?

I put out the distress call

and like a bat emoji in the sky

you see how much I need you.

And you call

and you say ‘Hi! How are you?’

#atinylife the other stuff

In between the published works –

the novel that did OK

a story in that collection put together by MA students,

a poem here, a poem there

the joy of a short-listing

the folder of ‘no longer on submission’ scribblings

there is the ‘other’ stuff.

I couldn’t fit it all into the bookshelf:

hours spent tinkering with broken friends, instead of broken sentences;

days spent with Netflix, instead of cutting, instead of copy-pasting;

weeks spent holding the cat, instead of the pen

piggy-bank empty and smashed. All spent.

Tears leaking from the hot water tank

shredded text messages used for mouse nests

reams of progress stacked, dormant

still in their polythene. Sterile blank pages.

Where is all the work I could have done

if other people had been

kind? accepting? loyal?

had trusted my life had to be lived this way?