FebulousFebruary 2026: The Old Photograph

Day thirteen

Wild

We picked wild flowers in the industrial port of Ramsgate

We picked wild flowers in the industrial port of Ramsgate

She started singing and I joined in, we were singing Bread and Roses

She said, it’s great you know all the words. I said, how’s your perfect harmony? 

We went wild camping in the mossy park of Loch Lomond

We went wild camping in the mossy park of Loch Lomond

I brought a trowel so we could bury our poo. She brought blankets and magic mushrooms. 

She asked why don’t you set free your heart. I said, girl I know you’ll be gone soon. 

We went wild swimming in the reservoir near Sheffield

We went wild swimming in the reservoir near Sheffield

We took off our tops. Took some pictures that were hot. It’s weird we have the same boobs. 

Asked if she could share with her new friends in the queer bilberries Whatsapp group. 

We picked wild flowers in the industrial port of Ramsgate

We picked wild flowers in the industrial port of Ramsgate

She started singing and I joined in, we were singing  Bread and Roses

She said, it’s great you know all the words. I said, how’s your perfect harmony? 

Megan Megglestein

Ramsgate

Day eleven

THE SOCIAL MASK March 86/rev 2022

Today I met a friend, 

– once close, some decade and a half ago.

Nervous though I was at what I knew

Yet what became revealed seemed something wholly unfamiliar.

On the outside?  Very much the same

(Though maybe emphasised a little more):

Heavy bovine features

-Back then I would never have used that word, or thought –

Yet so much like her mother’s

Whose death caused us this strained reunioned meet.

And whose likeness I’d never previously discerned.

No extra weight, surprisingly,

 as clearly there’s a genetic  inclination that’s built in.

• (How inner fears so generate suspicion)!

Hair, much the same in length and cut, 

Though so much blonder now,

And a face now painted 

To a line-free glaze

that

 made me wonder what was being masked beneath.

So strange that this oddly fitting girl that I once new

had grown to match the glamour of a Peggy Lee.

But what was there beneath? The sentiments, the feelings, the politely muted anger towards me?

Shielding behind my child, used as a screen,

I peered and peeked,

And was discomforted at what I think I saw…

The platitudes abounded,

With posturings and posings –

My erstwhile friend resembled something like a- player queen;

Sympathy was entitled, and pain and loss 

 were owned, eked out …and seemingly enjoyed.?

*       *       *

It took some years of input to see again beneath the mask,

Yet so, in time, we managed a closer if more distanced intimacy.

Ian Munday,  LLanbrynmair, Wales

Day ten

The Fruit’s Revenge

Murdering plum

here I hang, from my stem ripening in the sun

The tree branches swing I cling and brighten, awaiting ripening to deepening reds, my coat of protective skin, to flare…

I hide there within the fanfare of claws, wings and teeth, I’m the insects’ feast. They suck my sap and leave me feeling rather crap. 

But most common are the human hands that pluck me from the lands for jams and not the caterpillars.     The hands are the real killers, scrumping thrillers, the common land millers and tillers, all the jam jar fillers, killers. 

A glass jam jar is my hearse, my sweet nectar is your curse.

Your hands feel and peel away my skin painfully thin and throw me in the bin. Discarded, my coat I no longer wear from your, rip, your tear my flesh uncloaked, sliced and pummelled to death.  Eat my pip I dare.

The knife scored out my core, my stone heart rejected like old bones, if caught in your throat my pip, you choke. 

You scoop the zest, the best of the flesh, and place me to rest in a jar, whispering, you my favourite jam to spread on bread.  My life’s dread.

You spy the stone you left alone, my core my heart you tore, you put it in your mouth rolling it about you can’t resist you grab the jar, pop the lid, the knife you slide and spread me on your bread……..

A big mistake, the stone seals your fate. You bite and swallow my heart, it sticks and chokes for sure, you breathe no more.

Laying on the kitchen floor, you’re off to the grave yard, stone buried, my heart secure. I’ll be covered in earth once more. 

Andrea Francis, London 

Lost and Found

“When one door closes, another opens.”

When one door slams shut, the force of the air shatters a window, and glass flies everywhere, slashing expectations, blowing papers, dreams and possibilities round the room. Letting in fresh air, fresh ideas……and fresh terrors.m Letting out the heat, the familiar smells of home…..and the canary – delighted by his freedom, a flash of yellow joy heading for the apple tree.

Through the window, free of its imperfectly cleaned glass, I can see the canary ion his tree, and seeing him, I notice the appleblossom, imagining its smell. That window might also be a door; carefully- don’t cut yourself – follow the canary outside, smell the blossom, feel the sun. Forget the other door, the jumbled mess inside, the broken glass.

Smug people will tell us that disaster or opportunity is only a question of attitude. The window is not lost, the garden is found. The canary is not lost, he is free.

But I still miss him.

Fin, Gateshead 

Day eight

Lost and Found

Creaky knees

Running up stairs

Careless indulgence

Saturated fat avoidance

Levis jeans

M&S elasticated waistlines

Red wine

Alcohol free beer

Dancing till dawn and a burger van chaser

It’s a late night at 11pm

The lemon hue of spring light

The sweet joy of snowdrops

Friends

Family

Birdsong

True love

Gratitude

Lel Meleyal, Scarborough

Day seven

Queer

(after Guadagnino, Burroughs and Bishop)

Goodness but that yellow paintwork is grubby, 

exquisite arches but each one absolutely filthy.

I’d go all the way to Mexico too for that exact blend of canary and grime.  

Stupid I know but I’m hungry for new windows, new views. 

At your feet, a black rainbow snake nurses its tail.

Alone, unwitnessed means all the time in the world.

How else to account for my days of dust, my rainy city weeks? 

Kicking my heels in other people’s tropics, 

Is this what they call yearning?

Everyone here’s forever taking a drag, 

swallowing, laughing remarkably. 

I would do too, in situ.

Careful with that concealed revolver!

I want to talk to you without speaking.

A saucy Miss sits at the bar, eyebrow cocked like a pistol. 

Nothing degrades a person like a game of chance,

that white suit is getting grubbier by the hour, it’s the waiting.

Fingers grope in a bowl of sliced lemon, dash salt like dirt on the countertop.

Your hand, a rock, throttles a tumbler. above it, you rumble: más, más.

I want to talk to you without speaking.

I’m not queer, Lee.

I know.

The skyline at dawn like the morning after stubble burn,

the smoke of my sighs by your sleeping ear, más, más.

We all love somebody sometimes.

Dodo Brooks, Kent 

Day six

A lifetime 

We like birds now. We

Can name them. From their song. We 

Used to snort Charlie.

Caf, Scarborough

Day five

Undo

 We don’t know in advance about the things we can’t undo. 

 I think it is a keyboard button I can press to release myself just in time from a bad decision  I didn’t think through in time. 

 Then there are the deletes you can’t backtrack on no matter how many folders you search through with a sense of futility and despair, which does not come all at once but over days sometimes. 

 A stab right in the solar plexus with a breath which can’t be drawn quite deeply enough for the relief of tomorrow being another day. 

There are images which can be never unseen but as slight comfort to aging process and ravages of a progressive disease my memory is not what it once was. Unreliable and yet dropping in cruelly, one of those fragments I really need an undo or delete option for.

 Janet Jones, Sussex

Day four

What I learned from this heartbreak

This heartbreak

This raw, turbulent heartbreak

This painful, seemingly endless heartbreak.

It taught me so much.

I have learned to lean into friendships, 

To seek joy where there is none, 

I have learned to sing, 

even though I’m not winning.

What I know now

From this particular heartbreak

Is everything I never knew I needed

Jess Read, Kent 

Day three

Lost and found

Spending over the last 40 years+ trying to fit into various relationships at work and in my personal life I think I have finally found a ‘better’ me.  

Not necessarily ‘better’ to others maybe, but someone who has found out that she needs to choose herself and her needs first.  

I was lost and like the ‘poor relative’, surrounded by narcissistic (even toxic) people.  

In more recent times, I have opted to withdraw. 

I was lost; 

lost in a desire to please and rescue; 

a true co-dependant; 

saying yes to all and sundry, and always doing what I could to ‘impress’.  

I have now found a better me.  

I know I am worth all the effort I pour into myself.  

I know I still care, still want to please, but only if it suits.   

Who cares what people truly think of me? 

If I love you then I love you with my whole heart but that heart is now ruled a bit better by my head.

Anne Lamb, Kent