The dude casually eating fish and chips on a park bench during his lunch break will rush to stop the smoke alarm’s beep from waking his newborn at night. The woman shouting at a client down the phone in the quiet carriage will tend to her hydrangeas. The geezer crying in the pub will buy a share bag of Fruit Pastilles. The toddler covered in urine will put up its own shelves after its divorce. The smiling bus driver will call 999 on a neighbour for moving his bins. The writer writing about a life-changing death from the past will write about a life-changing death in the future. The pensioner being feed a cheese toastie by her son will laugh at the terrible acting and gore in horror films in bed.

Carl Burkitt 2025

Sonder is the feeling when you realise everyone you see, everyone who passes you by, has their own complex lives.

I would never
switch off your Championship Manager game
without asking if you’ve saved it
or turn the volume down
of your David Gray White Ladder album
without asking you to do so first
or interrupt your GSCE maths revision
without asking if you have a minute,
but please at least pretend to listen to me
when I tell you a girl will kiss you one day
and make you and your son a Black Forest cake,
just because.

Carl Burkitt 2025

Enouement is the wish that you could go back in time and tell your past self about the future.

Frustration appears
like a hole in a sock
you’ve never worn before
during a funeral
you’ve been asked to speak at
for someone you didn’t like
during an FA Cup Final
your team will definitely win
on the hottest day of the year
and your funeral shoes are new
so you’re getting a blister
on the toe sticking out the hole
and everything dies
and you get the picture.

Carl Burkitt 2025

and Ellipsism is the term given
to a sense of sadness one experiences when realising that one won’t live
to see the future.

Carl Burkitt 2025

Dot the i’s
on your mortgage application
with love hearts or lightening bolts.
Wear underwear
with cartoon characters on
under suit trousers at a funeral.
Eat eight eggs. Fart on the bus.
Get a face tattoo
on the day of a job interview.
Walk in puddles with no wellies.
Write a message for the postman
on the back of every envelope you send.
Take advice.
Don’t take advice.
Always moisturise.

Carl Burkitt 2025

‘Liberosis is the desire to care less about things. It’s the feeling you get when you wish you could be a child again, without cares and concerns.’

You’re eating toast on a train.
Your suit trousers are resting
at your ankles above running shoes.
The toast is covered in honey.
Your phone is playing the Sopranos.
Your hair is in a bun.
The toast crumbs are in your beard.
You have a head torch on your head.
It is lunchtime.
I picture you cycling a Lime bike
when we arrive in London Euston
to a meeting where you’ll say things
like ‘let’s all practice radical candour’
and ‘sounds like beer o’clock to me’
and you remember everyone’s names
and can recommend good egg cafes
and you’ve got a jazz gig to go to tonight
and oh you’re getting off at Stoke.

Carl Burkitt 2025

Adronitis is a sense of frustration experienced when meeting a new and interesting person, but realising how long it is going to take to develop the relationship fully.

It was a train
you know the kind
fast and on tracks and seats
at about 6.45am
there was a bloke next to me
typing on a laptop
not next to me but across from me
wearing a navy blue suit
not across from me but above me
drinking a can of Monster
and for a second
he looked a bit like an owl
not a beak
not eating a mouse
his head rotated 360 degrees
four times and
oh forget it

Carl Burkitt 2025

Exulansis is a sense of frustration when you realise that you are talking about an important experience, but other people are unable to understand or relate to it, and so you give up talking about it.

ME: You look good.

ME: I know. You look good too.

ME: I know.

Carl Burkitt 2025

‘Jouska is a hypothetical conversation that you play out over and over in your head.’

Opia is the name given to the intense
feeling of invasive arousal that one feels
when engaging in mutual gaze.

Carl Burkitt 2025

His children will tell you
he spent his life in the garden
building their whims:
miniature golf courses,
dandelion farms,
a quick-cricket pitch,
Easter egg hunts,
a two-storey treehouse,
a picnic bench.
He will tell you
he wasn’t trying to ignore inside.

Carl Burkitt 2025