<\/p>\n
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Not again<\/strong><\/p>\n You haven\u2019t left the house all week You sense the hills you\u2019ve grown to love The weight of these days has bothered you; <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mark Connors<\/strong> is a writer from Leeds. He has been widely published in magazines, webzines and anthologies in the UK and overseas. His debut poetry collection, Nothing is<\/em> Meant to be Broken<\/em>, was published by Stairwell Books in 2017. For more info visit www.markconnors.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Not again You haven\u2019t left the house all week and blame the flu, but something else has kept you in, cocooned in tog of duck feather and down, books on your lap, a cat and dog for company, Sky Movies on tap. You sense the hills you\u2019ve grown to love but they\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18683"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18757,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18683\/revisions\/18757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nand blame the flu, but something else
\nhas kept you in, cocooned in tog
\nof duck feather and down, books on your lap,
\na cat and dog for company, Sky Movies on tap.<\/p>\n
\nbut they\u2019ve never seemed so distant
\nin this February tumult. Even the dog knows
\nit\u2019s not as bad as it looks out there
\nand no matter how ill you think you are,
\na walk up the lane to the tarn
\nwould cure this shallow melancholy
\nthat has no business here.
\nBut what good are flu and sadness
\nif they don\u2019t mark you in some way?<\/p>\n
\nthough all is well and by 6 pm
\nthe house will be full, laughter, a given,
\nthere\u2019s a tightness in your chest
\nthat is more than just flu symptom:
\na hacking doubt \u2013 you\u2019ll not be part of this
\nwhen those you\u2019ve fooled are wise to you.
\nBut wise to what? You are little but yourself.
\nThough you made a mess of what you had before
\nwould it take much effort to not do that again?
\nYou put on your shoes, shake the lead at the dog,
\nopen the door, raise your face to the rain.<\/p>\n