FebulousFebruary 2026: The Old Photograph

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

Day two

Lost and Found

One day I lost my inside smile.

I still knew how to do the outside bit.

How to move my lips

into a curve

but I couldn’t make it reach my eyes.

On another day

after no longer than forever

I felt it creeping about

looking here and there to find the way

and when it reached my eyes

I had found it again.

Megan Williams, Wales

Day one

Lost and Found

The loves I lost,

To days darkened by shadows.

The smell of oil paint, 

The texture on canvas.

The loves I lost, 

To days marked by sorrow,

The quiet word,

A touch of prose.

The loves I gained,

Through healing and strength.

A painting almost complete,

Some prose near finished.

The loves I gained,

Through slow meditation.

Practising an art,

Forming a poem.

To the loves I have always had,

May you remain warm and soft,

May you be in my heart,

And at home at my hearth.

Lauren Marie, Christchurch, Aotearoa

FebulousFebruary 2025 is just around the corner……

FebulousFebruary 2025 is on the horizon my creative beauts!

Day twenty nine

Meeting myself 

Picture this:

A soggy Saturday afternoon, October, 

A child, my younger self, so young, 

in tortured ratty plaits,

Patched jeans tucked into muddy wellingtons 

Framed in a doorway like an advert for Persil

Smiling your delight

Cherish that

Back from a clay happy morning in the fields

Following the grumbling plough

Along arrow straight furrows

Teams of children and mothers – not yours!

Digging in the wet heavy Earth,

Gathering caked potatoes into dirty baskets.

Tattie picking we called it –

Savour the joy of small things child,

Remember that

Enjoy the mucky everydayness of 

Of working in the mud

with your village pals

calling and teasing, competing – 

The companionship of hard work

enjoy the dirty smear on your nose

And the mud on your hands

And the dampness of the Autumn air on your skin

Treasure that.

Enjoy what came before your world

Exploded into chaos

And your family split apart

Into separate tiny atoms

Never to be whole again

You will despair, and lose each other in the debris

But time will teach you how to find 

Each other once again

Remember that.

You were bold and brave

And troublesome

In those younger days 

It had to be you, they’d say,

And that is who you’ll stay

Fighting for what you care about,

Marching chanting singing your protest

Shoulder to shoulder –

There’s family in that

You’ll grieve and hold yourself tight inside

You’ll bury your face in many pillows

The terror of trusting will haunt your days

But you will rise again

I promise you…

You’ll be bold and brave

And troublesome again

And your chosen family 

Will love you for that

Just remember that alone 

Can be a healing place

A place to watch sparrows

And breathe the creamy scent

Of February blackthorn blossom

Alone can bring the quiet

That will give you back 

To yourself again

Hold onto that

Val Johnson                      Feb 2024

Herne Bay