Click and Connect

By Sonia Burns

(I)

Luck gains a delivery slot but websites freeze,
online queues grow, virtual trolleys crash.

It is your birthday. I order whiskey and wine
with our shopping but it doesn’t arrive.

I trudge surly streets in search of supplies,
shuttered shops signed closed due to Covid-19.

(II)

The morning I get the news that she’s gone,
I brave a supermarket for the first time.

I sanitise my hands compulsively, hours 
queuing in a car park, shuffling blankly.

Inside is the apocalypse, civilisation broken;
shelves emptied for underground bunkers.

It feels like punishment; she died alone
and I’m living in a George A Romero film.

Soon, it becomes normality. Faces covered
for added surreality. At least the rationing stops.

(III)

Winter, another surge of disease, to stay safe
I adopt a temporary routine of Click and Collect.

Every Saturday and soon he recognises me,
waves, knows my usual morning slot.

I wonder if he has to pick out my items, 
imagine him in the cavernous store searching 

for halloumi cheese, recycled loo roll.
We meet outside and spared the masks, we smile.

His name is Darren, he talks about his wife
and home schooling four kids, the holiday

they had to cancel.  Other shoppers look on 
enviously, in awe of our easy camaraderie.

(IV)

As spring arrives, I want to thank him, tell him
he has helped me, buy chocolate for his children.

I wait, blinking in sunlight, for back doors to open 
but the last time I go it is a woman with my order.

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Written Word ‘Hand’ poems