Rebecca lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. She is a psychiatrist, and has blogged and written extensively about mental illness, more recently moving to creative writing. She is now undertaking an MA, with poetry as her primary genre.

Written at the 31^st  March 2020.

Fear and shopping in 2020

The shop was full of people buying

toilet roll

I kid you not

swathes and swathes of it they bought

their trollies ached with

beans, rice, pasta, paracetamol.

some, the posh ones, hid wine

beneath their beans

perhaps to wind away those

dreary nights ahead

perhaps to ward off shakes.

I bought a pack of carrots

I bought four large tomatoes

I bought oatcakes

and soap, but hard not soft.

I may well be unwise.

self-service check out only

no warmth of human hands and smiles.

but waiting, all of us,

for something