‘Lockdown voices’ is an oxymoron. Lockdown stripped me of my voice. I think over the time I was cramped up in my house - I wrote nothing. My writing can be my everything but it felt wrong to float away. It felt unfair to air out the suffering of suicidal ladies in 1653 when we had a new age of plague upon us. So Lockdown became the time of writer’s block. I was hollow and so were my words. Even now looking back trying to find something to say I feel choked. Like a generational trauma, none of us will recover from. I remember the doctrine of hope I was prescribed but refused to take: the ‘love your bubble’, the ‘stay connected apart’, the smiling families doing homework at the kitchen table. It’s all well and good cuddled up by the fire with a pile of books and a positive attitude. One thing to paint rainbows with your children and hang them in the window to say, “there is sunshine after every storm”. But that is your privilege. And I was sick of it. What about cold kitchen floors or purple bruises that were just another statistic? What about empty homes and loneliness? What about hospitals and fear and states without welfare? We may have had a warm and summery Lockdown, but for some, it was the lock that chained them to their suffering and I don’t know how to be an optimist about that. I don't know how to have a voice when there are so many left voiceless.