I’ve been feeling a little untethered
I bought a new pan
so I can touch it
the non-stick
so slippery
the way nothing sticks to me
either
the way life is just a series of events
I came to my computer
went back to the kitchen
I’ve burnt my new pan
the old one I knew
its proportions
the handle that wobbled
where to place it on the hob
the man in seat C
also here for the first time
in the front row
was finding it as funny as I was
all those people filing past
through snow
I mean everyone
he asked me for the meaning of life
what was my happiness moment
he said it was when my first baby was
born
I said I wasn’t going to say it
it can’t be
that simple
because it was also awful
and is relief the same as happiness
and is happiness only an absence
like a kind of uncrushing
a here we go again
like how my little boy says he wasn’t
anywhere
till he was three
said then he started
I said there isn’t a time
until you’ve lived more times after it
for comparison
through consequence
and that isn’t the moment
I said what was his happiest moment
I didn’t
I should have asked him
I said maybe it was now
my happiness
which surprised me
wondering if that meant I was alright
or if everything before had been
somehow worse
or worse
wondering if I just meant this
this sitting next to him
this talking to someone
this being attended
scooped
into the possibilities of motion
because really
anything
anywhere
sometimes
then I’m in the house
I buy two pans
what else can I change here
I throw away the plastic toys my
children keep shedding
back to the sea with them
expanding
their rippling muscles
on row 1 we sat facing the people who
worked there
for takeoff
I said this is awkward
them looking so nonchalant
and me so afraid of everything
I said they don’t exist
one smiled at me
I said I won’t look at a pilot
I didn’t have a back rest to grab
so the boy said he’d talk to me
wouldn’t stop talking to me
all the way home
I look like my father
in this seat
in this coat
in this face
in this hair
he asked me if a man could ever be
friends with a woman
told me he’d discovered he had a half
sister
twelve minutes before embarking
I said I’ve only ever wanted to talk to
people
dead or alive
be allowed to reply
and what is travelling if not collision
he said I was a pigeon
always a pigeon
wherever I would go
he said most communities are closed
what landscapes do I remember
I said the Gobi Desert
the Westfjords of Iceland
tethered and untethered
alone but not
because you can tell can’t you
who’s open to the world
who’s trying to unlock its marginal
kindnesses
who’s still curious
I said you’ve got public transport
and you’ve got the supermarkets
that’s where we find each other
that’s what we’ve got
I said some people answer questions so
easily
a baby
a marriage
I’m not sure they’re always thinking
about it
I bought some make-up remover pads
some menthol shampoo
some floss
Lydia Unsworth is a poet from Manchester, UK. Her work
has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Dreaming Awake: New
Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia, and the United
Kingdom. She is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Place Writing in
Manchester, looking at kinship with disappearing post-industrial architecture.
She has 6 poetry collections and 4 above / ground chapbooks, and has two new
poetry collections coming out in 2026, Stay Awhile (April, Knives Forks
and Spoons Press) and This Now Extends to My Daughter (May, Blue Diode
Press).
