Milk

Shards of shattered glass and milk dripping
from the ceiling into small, cloud white puddles and

was that the first time, perhaps, that I knew,
really knew that something was amiss, that

all was not well in my world enclosed with
books and Brownies and cello and spaghetti

hoops on toast? I remember the tears that
flowed as freely as the milk spreading across

the kitchen floor and the words sorry sorry sorry
echoing around the glass-splintered room

though whether it was an apology for the mess
or for the fact she had tried to hit him but

missed I wasn’t sure; but I searched
high and low amidst the milky debris for

the bottle-cap, the shiny solidity of it for
I always liked to press it between thumb and

forefinger and watch how it winked and gleamed
in the sunlight. But it was nowhere to be

found and my mother wept, begging me to get out
of the kitchen in case I trod on glass and I

looked at her stricken face, smelt the faint scent
of my father’s aftershave, for he was nowhere

to be seen; I escaped, bottle-top-less into
the wide expanse of garden where I stood, blinking

into the green-yellow sunlight and digging my nails into
my palms until small, half-moons appeared.

How To Stay Awake

Whip the mind into action once it is
dark and quiet and give it a good workout.
Think of your to-do list, of your cat’s mysterious illness,
of the painful relationship you have with your sister,
of your stepdad’s Parkinson’s, of that tune
which you love but you wish it would stop,
of that friend you need to get back to and
the court case you have coming up and how
you’ve left it till the last hour to submit your statement.

Think about how our earth keeps breaching
one limit after another and how those who
stand on mountaintops to shout the truth
of this are being silenced. Victimised.

Think of that conversation you had
with your grandmother when you
were a teenager, asking her how,
when she knew about the Jews being
herded up and loaded on to trains
and being murdered in concentration
camps, she didn’t do something.
And how she had just raised her
shoulders, spread her palms.
There was nothing we could do, she said.
Nothing at all.
Remember how you found that so
unsatisfactory and how you had
narrowed your eyes and thought,
No, you could have done something.
You should have.

And though the world clamoured
never again, never again, like
the peal of cathedral bells across
a morally bankrupt landscape,
think right now of the dying, starving, wounded
people of Gaza waiting for food,
their arms outstretched, their taste buds
hopeful. Think of the jostling, the crowding,
the urgency, the desperation and
the Israeli soldiers firing on the crowd to
keep order.

Think of the elderly man, poet and sage
who is shot in the head and the bride who
was married just six months back and
who holds the seed of new life in
her belly. Think of the mother who
tries to protect her child who has already
lost her father and each sibling,
flailing her arms
like a windmill but they are
both hit and they crumple in on
one another like a pack of cards
as another person snatches the loaf
of bread from the dying mother’s hand
and runs across the scarred earth,
dodging bullets.

Think again of that conversation
with your grandmother
and consider how much you
know, far more than she did,
for the information sits there
at the tap of a button, deep in your pocket,
at the flick of a radio switch.
and how you are trying to live,
trying to find joy,
trying to step through your days
while the horror of this stretches
out across an
endless desert.
Think about how impotent
you feel, fuelled by grief
and rage and helplessness.

Never again.
But it is happening
again.
And again
And again.

Think of all this in
the still, silent, peaceful patch of
night that embraces you in
its nebulous promise of wakefulness.
At least, try it.
If you want to stay awake.

Rebecca Stonehill lives in Norfolk with her husband and three teenaged children. She writes historical fiction, teaches creative writing to children, and runs Norwich Writers Rebel, a local offshoot of the writing arm of Extinction Rebellion. Rebecca loves wild swimming, hiking, working in her family allotment, and playing the piano.