After Lockdown
Gail Dendy
Things will be different, then.
You will not be locked down in another town.
I will touch you as if I’d known you
centuries ago. As if we’d been drawn
as miniatures, twinned with a silver clasp.
Things will be different, then.
I tell you the sun will not set over Italy
when we travel there.
The gondolas in Venice
will always be waiting for us,
their prows like swan’s necks. Black swans.
Your skin will still be beautiful.
You will kiss me.
We will open windows, doors,
unlatch our shining lives.
Our children will fit perfectly in their beds.
The sun will have forgotten how to set.
Things will be different then.
GAIL DENDY was first published in the UK by Harold Pinter, with her South African debut being through Gus Ferguson’s Snailpress. She has eight collections of poetry to her name, the most recent entitled On Days Such as This (Botstotso, 2020). Accolades include winning the SA PEN Millennium playwriting competition and being shortlisted for the Thomas Pringle Award (Prose) as well as for the Sol Plaatje/EU Poetry Prize. She was longlisted for Short Story Day Africa, the Twenty in 20 Short Story Project, and received ‘Highly Commended’ in the UK Poetry Space Competition and the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award for an unpublished novel. Gail is passionate about dance and still does regular dance classes. Gail Dendy’s site can be accessed here.
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