Lockdown – This Jolly Beggar

When Christmas Comes

Written for Rochelle's Friday Fictioneers  
Genre: Realism
Word count: 100 words
PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson 
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When Christmas Comes

As a child, Christmas decorations made her sick with excitement. Now they made her sick for those gone missing since the lock-down. They showed up in little boxes the home projected onto a screen, but she knew they were impersonators. She watched, but refused to speak to those teary-eyed strangers. Her own family was naturally cheerful, even boisterous. “Lord, where are they?” Every day she recited their names, rolling them in her mouth like hard candy. Every day there was less of them to remember. But Christmas came. Her heart burned. There was a Light to investigate in the heavens.

By the Fence

Every day I see her there
child by the chain link fence
imagining friends and school games
her mouth forming an O at the clouds
as if they were breath-formed
to shower the blighted with dreams
dragons incinerating fences
between a million small figures
as time passes like wind over grass,
blown green now brown,
while the limitless sky watches
unblinking.

dVerse Poetics #428, “Poetry as Witness”: Frank writes, “So tonight poets, let’s bear witness in our local neighbourhood.” I chose to write on the harm that is being done to our children during this time of enforced social isolation.