Finished in April 2020

Waiting for Normality

By Zac Langridge

My lockdown teddy bear looking very isolated... :(

It seems so long ago that a world existed where

Children could play and people could hug

And cars could drive freely down the road

Heading obliviously to their destinations far away

The night is quiet and the stars are bright

But humanity is sleeping restlessly

As the unrelenting forces of time thrive around us

While the once-unrelenting humans wait for freedom

Will it come?

Will freedom be on the horizon?

Surely it must!

But we cannot tell, and I don’t know

Life is still beautiful

The sky's still blue

The grass is still green

And birds still play within the trees

But everything’s changed

Everything that we took for granted

Everything that was once free to our taking

Is now under lock and key

With a big price to pay if we break that lock by force

Now, the streetlights illuminate streets that are quiet, and don’t need them anymore

And the grass continues to grow in the parks, just waiting for the mower that won’t be arriving to cut it

And the swings and roundabouts sit undeterred, swaying slightly, touched only by the wind

And the people sit as the money trickles from banks and wallets, with no way to fill it back up

Everything’s different, but the same

We still eat, talk, breathe and sleep

We buy food, eat it, replace it in our cupboards

We walk, watch movies, read books

But everything’s under lockdown

Life is now lonely and weird

Just waiting for permission to let up

And become normal again

But if it becomes normal too soon

Will it ever be normal again?

We’ll see…

THE END