Band Practice

Emily Munro

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Tonight, at band practice, we did that song we know really well. It was the first one we learned together. We were stood in a circle with the mics and we went over the parts. Over each phrase. There’s a hard bit, you remember? The section we call ‘fancy’. It was stiff on my throat, full on the lungs. 

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load me up, your fragile life

I was tired and the day had been bad. I told you some of it. Kept other thoughts to myself. And Jerry was excited, he had the mattresses up, and Kate was happy with a cool beautiful look about her, and Lara was radiant and showing us the container where she keeps her pills. 

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prick in garden wounds

I went to the loo and fixed my ponytail. When I came back I felt like crying. I think it was because we were singing about mothers. We’ve been working on that song for years and all week I had been trying really hard to be a mother and many other things as well and I was no good at any of it. I think that’s why those molecules gathered in my eyes. I didn’t let them fly. I didn’t want your attention, the words of consolation. 

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 flee hot antimony

You are all kind, that’s true. But for once I wanted to be the one that got the comment for looking healthy or for having accomplished one bloody thing, even if it was for the act of changing my hair.

rest

Emily Munro is a writer, filmmaker and curator. Her work appears in a range of publications including The Drouth, Erato, JAKE, Briefly Zine and History Scotland. She was longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award (2023) and the Briefly Write Poetry Prize (2022) and is a member of The Prescription, a medical humanities writing group based at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. You can find her on twitter @ellomunro and at https://www.emilymunro.co.uk/.