Getting By

GETTING BY

Bennie died for the fifth time in as many years last week...

Steve takes animals to the sea and leaves them there. He thinks it's nicer by the waves.

Beth regularly wins Employee of the Month at a small firm she runs from her back bedroom... but it is expanding now and she lives in fear of hiring an assistant who will almost certainly be better.

Nearly 86 years ago Jim quit eating, yet still he relapses three square times a day. He gets depressed, he says, and can't help it; he thought failure would no longer be an issue so late in life. It's a vicious circle... it's a vicious circle is life, he says. And stares longingly at some pickle and a pork pie.

From her scalp each morning Sorcha plucks a single long hair to keep as a souvenir of the day ahead, before running to the bathroom to dye all that remain. One way or another she will have a tangled and colourful past.

Myself, I have a mid-life crisis every other fortnight and at this rate will soon be immortal.

We all get by somehow, I guess. And even writing prose poems doesn't seem so far-fetched, some days.