Emma’s Creative Writing Piece

Extract from Emma’s Creative Writing Piece

“Use your resistance band to tie up the garden gate when the lock breaks after a storm.”

Google ‘make-up tutorials’. All the vloggers are young and you are doing your eyebrows wrong. Eyebrows are important. Frame your face, paint on hard edges. Wear your new eyebrows with nervous reticence. Your children will laugh. Drape your face in a soaked facecloth & flush your edges down the sink.

Google ‘Mini face-lift’.

Turn flabby & languid under sweatpants. Buy a resistance band from Amazon and disinfect the package when it arrives. Follow online exercise classes. Roll around on the floor like a spilled plum & let the children ride on your back during Cat/Cow pose. Become sore under your sweatpants. Use your resistance band to tie up the garden gate when the lock breaks after a storm.

Watch your 12 year old miss out as longed-for transitions & traditions pass her by. Attempt little consolations. Make her laugh. At night while the wee ones are in bed let her cry into your neck like she’s five again. Wish she were five again.

Feel little bursts of worry and hurt.

Home-school all 4 of them. Begin each morning with ordered determination before unravelling like a spool of thread in front of them. Search the soft little curves of their expressions for glimmers of progress or understanding.

Google ‘Signs of dyslexia’.

Persist like you are herding cats.