Perhaps they already know that I am in crisis,

observed tiny shifts in my behaviour

of which even I was unaware;

the depth of my tread upon the carpet,

or the slouching in my chair

from which I shall not leap up to rescue a forgotten cake

or slowly hoist myself to trudge to the corner shop:

its milk cartons must serve another.

And no more shall my day start

with a blast of cold to snatch my breath

as the shower wakes for morning

or with a desperate stretch

for a toilet roll that is not there.

For everything is just so. Optimized.

A thousand decisions and revisions

outsourced to things far smarter than me.

And, in its place, an absence

and this stretching of the hours.

There. It has gone. Into the unforgiving jaws of the post box. In the future, it will post itself.

In celebration, I watched an old episode of Taggart with the cat and began to think about next month’s Poetry Club.

Saturday March 10th

Dylan’s team continues to defenestrate the formbook. They picked up their second victory in as many weeks under his guidance. He seems remarkably phlegmatic about it all. ‘It’s simple,’ he said with a shrug as we walked back, ‘winning is just about seeing the possible.’

Sophie came to collect him later and, while standing on the doorstep, removed the pin from her hand grenade of news: Stuart is moving in with them from April. Interpreting my two-minute silence as uncomfortable, she asked me how I felt about it. ‘Fine. Absolutely fine. Yes, really fine. Totally fine,’ I responded, being completely fine about the situation, which I was, given that there was nothing not to be fine about.

I spent the evening playing Scrabble by myself, being fine, and trying to see the possible.

Sunday March 11th

Scrabble Board, Abandoned Mid-Game,
Author and Date Unknown

Monday March 12th

Since The Disastrous Affair of Leamington Spa, I have felt my corporate stock dwindle; ‘stock’ as in ‘reputation’ that is, not company shares, nor indeed my stock of aesthetically-pleasing yet utilitarian stationery, which remains as impressive as ever.

Senior eyes are averted from me, inner sanctums are closed to me and frosted-glass meeting rooms keep their secrets from me, occupied as they are by huddled suits and dark whispers.

The winds of change are blowing here. I hear the rattle of paper clips in the breeze.

Tuesday March 13th

All this change must have unsettled me. I have not written a poem since last Friday.

In search of inspiration I went onto Twitter. In my absence, my follower count has mushroomed to twenty-seven. Toby Salt now has over four hundred. I suspect most of these are spam accounts. But there, amongst my new followers, was Liz. I followed her back and, for reasons unclear to me, I instantly felt a digital thumbprint of pressure in the small of my back.