‘29’ by Lydia Unsworth

Any tips? A screen flashes: We are not here to fix each other. It is worth taking notes. I put down my spanner, my allen key, click them into position in their portable containers. They are anyway taken away from me at security as I have stored them in the wrong place. As with the methanol that time. Simple mistakes.

Details are lost during movement. Wet shoes, cables, VPNs, the sounds certain vowels make. Seven years after buying a t-shirt you were able to re-buy the same t-shirt from a German website. This made up for your loss in such a way as was not possible before the advent of the information age.

Time is broken. The sun means nothing because I have no idea what it meant yesterday. We are told Easter, we say OK. We are told to watch a film documenting the trials of a family who emigrated to South Africa at the end of the 19th century, we say OK. We sleep, we wake, sometimes next to one another, sometimes in a different place. We become vegan, Buddhist, freelance, anything. We practice nihilism, abstinence, caring.

From issue #7: autumn/winter 2018

About the Author
Lydia Unsworth is a poet based in Greater Manchester, whose recent collections include Mortar (Osmosis) and Arthropod (Death of Workers). Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Oxford Poetry and Shearsman Magazine. She has recently received Arts Council funding to work on her current collection and will soon begin a NWCDTP–funded creative writing PhD at MMU, exploring kinship with disappearing post-industrial architecture.