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In the time of coronavirus

A collection of stories submitted by the public on their experience of living through the time of the Coronavirus pandemic.
We are now safely through the first phase of response to coronavirus in New Zealand and people are reflecting on what this major and previously unimaginable global catastrophe has meant for us, as individuals, in the 21st century. Globally the losses and the scale of human suffering have been very great. This forum offers a space to reflect upon the experience and to consider questions such as: What are we learning from the pandemic? What might we need to remember and preserve? Through the alert levels our prime minister said repeatedly, ‘Stay safe, be kind.’ What was your experience, what did you observe, what mattered and how might we re-imagine a better direction going forward? If you would like to contribute to the re-collective effort please send me your reflections, observations, journal entries, stories to my contact page... just a page of A4 writing, with a title and a brief bio and they will be added to the repository of important writings flowering in this space.

The search for knowledge is.. an exercise in reminiscence, that is, an effort to recall and recollect that which we once knew.

Ahsivai Margalit quoted in Richard Horton, “The Ethics of Memory,” The Lancet, 6 June 2020

Islands by Eva de Jong

15/8/2020

3 Comments

 
Picture


​Eva de Jong is in her second year of studying for a Bachelor of Arts at Victoria University and completed a Creative Writing Course at the Institute of Modern Letters in 2020. Eva’s story ‘Islands’ was short-listed for the 2020 National Flash Fiction Youth Competition. Eva is passionate about writing and won the Prize for Poetry at Epsom Girls Grammar School in her senior year.

 
Over a socially-distanced morning tea break, Max tells Mary he loves her. Mary is looking into her coffee when he confesses:

“I love you, Mary.”

Mary pulls her dark hair behind her ear and removes a single Air-pod.
 
“I’m good Max, how are you?” 

“What?” he gasps, and then, “I-I’m good.” 

Two metres of hollow space separates their tables. It is a government-ordered chasm, a distance that sets everybody apart for their own good. It could have been an ocean.
 
“Lousy isn’t it?” Mary holds up a limp mask between her fingers. Max thinks again about how she has the most beautiful pale hands he has ever seen. 

“Lot of good it’ll do me; I can barely breathe in the bloody thing,” she sighs and Max gulps back the last of his coffee.

“It’s hard - it makes it hard, you know, to in some ways...breathe,” he agrees. Mary looks at him blankly.

“Yeah,” she says, “You alright mate?”

The curved points of Max’s ears are shiny and red, and he runs his hand over his glistening forehead.

“Yeah. Fine.” He drops his hand into his lap, eyes staying fixed on the wall ahead. 

“I think the extra shifts are getting to everyone,” she says gently. 

Max can feel her green eyes on him, soft and blinking.
 
“I better get back to work Mary,” he whispers hoarsely. Then he leaps up from his seat and yanks his mask back over his mouth.
 
“Oh. See you soon then, Max!” She calls.
 
Max turns from his table and walks quickly away. There is a single moment, between turning and walking, when he could reach her table across the two-metre gap.  He could touch the hand that rests there, wrist upturned and the palm glowing white, like light pulsing from a bacteria-ridden angel. 
 

3 Comments
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Copyright © 2017 Deborah Shepard
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Writing Life >
      • Reviews & Interviews
    • Giving Yourself to Life
    • Her Life's Work
    • Translucence
    • Between The Lives
    • Reframing Women
    • Tributes
    • Personal Writings >
      • Lockdown Journal
      • Travel Journal
      • Elegy for a friend
      • Christchurch - Post Quakes
      • On a residency
      • Deborah’s Love Letter to the Women’s Bookshop
      • Deborah's Q & A With Unity Books
  • Writing Memoir
    • Defining Memoir
    • The Participatory Model
    • Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
    • The Value of a Writing Class
    • From writing course to book publication
    • Your Writing Space
    • Writing on a Theme >
      • Window
      • Surviving a Crisis
    • Reviews of Memoir
  • Writers' stories
    • Covid-19 Stories
    • Writing Guidelines
  • Events
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Media
  • What People Say
  • Contact