She is Breaking

We’re separated by a screen, by a postcode and by any knowledge of either one’s life…

She is in her kitchen; the heart of the home; the place that gives nourishment. The place where I imagine she stirs, kneads, folds, or dusts food with love and care. Where she makes herself a packed lunch and smothers the worries of the last shift with extra mayonnaise or chutney.

I’m sat at my laptop in my home office, being swallowed by IKEA oak veneer furniture, overwhelmed with books, ambition and self doubt. I’m imbued with nervous energy; berating my self indulgence to do this research, and finding it difficult to shake of the desire for everything to be perfect.

I ask her a question and suddenly she becomes an upturned drawer from her seemingly ordered kitchen, emptying itself of stuff. She reaches into the pile and pulls out several urinary tract infections, dehydration, headaches and fatigue ensnared in a Tesco bag of fear rather than bag for life.

A bag of fear that she would waste the very little personal protective equipment that the hospital had in the first wave….

She is breaking.

She is the crack in her voice that I’ve become trapped in.

She is the exposed tear drop that appears to be plugging up her dam of un-cried grief. It mixes with the ink of her mascara to paint shapes of pain from her eyelashes to her cheeks.

She is the tight grip on her tissue that quickly wipes away the mess and the disarray, with the efficiency she would apply to neatly coiling up the wires of a ventilator.

She is breaking.

And I’m watching and listening and trying to embody in my whole being that I care; that if I could, I would put my arm around her or grasp her hand and look intently into her eyes to let her know that I hear her.

She is being heard. I hear her.

I realise that I am already marked by this research- certainly not cracked or broken but scratched… altered.

Stacey Moon-Tracy, April 2022