A book begins

Alexia PdC

01 Apr 2026 — 2 min read

Some writing from my retreat designed to support people like me, writers who want to but are not yet doing that thing. Writing the book that calls to us like a siren and allows a reader in.

There is a loneliness in my body. A longing.
Desires push up into my throat and urge to be uttered. I am 47 and have lived so many lives, too many to count.
My body let me know this could not last.

The cancer I grew in my appendix while dashing about the city, unable to work but determined to fulfil my destiny, was taken away and an everlasting tired settled into the vacant armchair.

Just as I was recovering, destiny showed her face in a global pandemic of a deadly and disabling virus. The kind our politicians lied about until they too were on ventilators. Honestly? I hoped one would die to show just what power lay in those tiny viral cells, beautiful in microscopic detail.

The ease of spread from one corner of the world to another laughed at our borders and our fences. Mass western panic / ignoring the danger was the reckoning of globalisation, defunded infrastructure in the home of the British Empire and a technocratic system of un-care. Unless, of course, you’re a Prime Minister.

To have long Covid is to be politics embodied, just as my queer HIV+ ancestors were. Harder to stigmatise us “long haulers” for our “life choices’”, but also easier to ignore. We lie in bed and on sofa at home as best we can, for as long as it takes. We remain still as we contemplate how much energy it might take to get a drink or use the loo. We are not the first of our family name either, just those who have a quicker story than our siblings with ME or CFS. I have CFS too, just for fun.

We know we are mis-trusted for we do not trust ourselves. Physically, I can move. Wiggle ten fingers and ten toes. Mitochondrialy and cognitively I am a marooned jellyfish. No sentient mammal lives in my bed. Perhaps I can absorb nutrients from the soft blanket atop my mattress and drink water by licking moisture in the air.

I write this as a Tired Writer, a phrase I find for myself on a writing retreat that buys me access to meals, companionship and no domestic demands.

I decide to write my story slowly, tiredly, compassionately, rawly, bumpily, blessedly.

I have survived and that was just the start.

Slow day // slow night

Content note: mention of war and the genocidal states of US slow night // slow day slow emerges when my body is in an immune system storm crip time, slow time, out of every day rhythm time when do you eat if you haven’t moved since waking and you feel

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Slow day // slow night

Knowing not Doing

Where are the words

A letter from the empire to himself