Covid Self-Portrait
This flat is on the fifteenth floor and the window does not open. The curtains are closed but the light rages through them, hot brown soup. He swims through it, he swims through it on his bare slicked skin and he can’t breathe but he cannot leave. It is forbidden. The mirror tricks him out of loneliness, he cavorts with it the way a dog would with its own reflection: that nub, that lump, that sprig of ear hair are another man’s and he berates him for coming so close in this tiny flat, when they must stay apart to stay alive. Under the pot-clang thanks at 6pm there is no one to hear him scream.
Meg Woodward
‘Covid Self-Portrait hinted at the claustrophobia of lock down, especially for those living alone.’
Meg Woodward lives in Reading and is Secretary of Reading Writers, the town's oldest creative writing group.
