Imagine this…

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You are walking down the street, you look up into the clear blue sky and see a small piece of paper floating down.

You catch it.

It’s your first ever words.

Soon more and more of them come down,

everything you’ve ever said, all your lies, your anger, your compassion, your bullshit,

your love,your insincerity blah, blah, blah…..

There’s so much of it, it begins to suffocate you, you can’t breathe.

You try to gather it all up,

you don’t want anyone to read it – do you?

Eventually the final piece drifts down.

It’s a piece of hatred.

You shove it in your pocket.

You have to drag your whole spoken life around with you wherever you go.

I guess you’ll be more careful the next time you say anything.

 

 

 

 

A picture of hope

I took part in Twelve Little Objects of Hope.   A new theatre project by Andy Barrett.  He is asking for twelve objects, little objects – that have a story of hope attached to them.  He will be taking the objects on a journey to Kosova where he will met a group of writers, show them the objects and tell them the stories.

The object I have given him is a picture of my mother.

Jadwiga Miarkowska aged 15.  When the picture was taken she had been released from a forced labour camp in Siberia and had travelled to Uzbekistan. She had Typhoid.  The story linked to this picture is one of chance, random acts of kindness, luck and always hope.  I’ll tell you the whole story later, but it’s all there in her eyes.