[DOUG is eating so much mango. A MAN WHO DOESN’T LIKE DOUG is doing anything else.]

DOUG: This mango is delicious.

A MAN WHO DOESN’T LIKE DOUG: That’s papaya.

[Curtain]

Carl Burkitt 2025

The brothers playing pickleball are pretending they hate each other. Every swear word and threat to tell mum bounces off their rackets and land in the past. Love lives in palms scooping a fallen body and teeth asking if their ankle is OK.

Carl Burkitt 2025

There’s a naked lad in the soft play.
I’m a grown up so I frown at his silliness
and avert my eyes like a camera operator
when a streaker runs on to a football pitch.
I wonder when chaos left my soul.
My clothes are heavy, bored,
as serious as the other grown ups.

Carl Burkitt 2025

New Year’s Day is every day. It is who am I? It is the slap of Lycra and a £9.99 takeaway pizza. New Year’s Day is a bullseye. It is League Two long ball football. It is a painkiller, an orange juice, a LEGO octopus. New Year’s Day is a bagel with cream cheese and an old school friend. New Year’s Day is loss. It is hamstrings stretches. It is loss. New Year’s Day is the vegetable you’re quite looking forward to after a five-day festival, a stranger asking you how you’re doing, a lightbulb in need of replacing.

Carl Burkitt 2025

Boxing Day is every day. It is a lie in. It is getting up early to go for a run just to get it out of the way. Boxing Day is crisps. It is the loo roll’s longest shift. Boxing Day is Thursday or Wednesday. It may even be Monday. Boxing Day is an unfindable piece of LEGO from a fresh packet. Boxing Day is chutney and getting a tram into the city centre to have ramen. Boxing Day is strangers walking in the park. Boxing Day is death and not knowing what to do with yourself. Boxing Day is football players pretending they were professional the night before. It is cold sprouts and trying to locate batteries.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Christmas is every day. It is tarmac littered with glitter, dogs in parks wearing fluffy coats. It is light and joy and too much cinnamon. Christmas is loss. Christmas is patterned loo roll and paper hats refusing to be taken off. Christmas is loneliness. Christmas is did you know that’s not actually Aled Jones singing in the film. Christmas is quite possibly the worst. Christmas is quite possibly the best. Christmas is listening. Christmas is singing behind a piano and eating an orange from a sock. Christmas is lunch. It is no lunch. Christmas is the cracker you don’t like but underneath the cheese you do like. Christmas is torture. It is the opening of a door to a garden with a trampoline built for the bones of someone you wish to fly but never get hurt.

Carl Burkitt 2024

I t ’ s e v e r y w h e r e
s p r e a d i n g l i k e a
u n i c o r n ’ s s n e e z e
a s p i d e r w e b g r e n a d e
t h e s p i t o f a d i s c o
b a l l i f a d i s c o b a l l
c o u l d s p i t .
I t ’ s e v e r y w h e r e .

Carl Burkitt 2024

I never liked mince pies.
Dandruff covered pastry shoulders.
How an older person might taste
if they were food.
Brandy butter is a metaphor
for society having too much time on its hands.
I eat mince pies because
a lecturer at university bought loads of boxes
for our final December seminar
but only three of us showed up.
My student loan had run out
so I took them all back to my flat
and ate them for six meals in a row.
I like mince pies.
I eat mince pies when I want to feel
nearer to my family.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Miniature Grinch fingers
claw their way into toes,
under nails, deep beneath
the skin of a morning’s promise.
They say don’t sweat
the small stuff. They say
little things make a big difference.
I had a nightmare that I was
reincarnated as a hoover
in December. I woke up
with a throat
like an inside out hedgehog
and an urge to be useful.

Carl Burkitt 2024

It hits
like someone saying
“can you believe it’s December already?”
Two days ago
we were eating apples and Quavers
for a snack. Today we’re eating
a box of Waitrose Cinnamon Knots
in a line on the sofa
opposite our freshly decorated tree
shivering in delight that
it’s December, finally.

Carl Burkitt 2024