By Jemilea
Sown on the concrete, thrown on stony ground; seeds searching for the cracks between pavement slabs
desperate for fertile ground. A discarded book, pages stained and well thumbed through, ripped, pages
missing. Unidentifable author. Can you accurately judge a book without a cover? Flung in ambivalent
attempts to educate the less fortunate, from a safe distance. A charity store, jumble sale reject. Unwanted,
unloved, uncared for. Like her.
Words. Letters strung together in consonant-vowel combinations she had never witnessed in her
household of angry four-letter, one-syllable vocal wars. Language necessary to navigate the various
territories and battlegrounds she encountered daily. Forming sounds, her mouth adjusting to the foreign
words she tried to pronounce, and practiced in secret. Words would set her free. Dictionary definitions
of captivity; the mortar that held the bricks of poverty she called home. Tower blocks unlike the lego she
built to represent the dollhouse dreams she saw captured on the 12inch screen that babysat her while her
parents argued about who had spent the electricity money on fags.
Inhaling secondhand smoke; the signal of the fire ablaze within her house, she turned to pages, characters,
imaginary friends who whispered to her detailed recollections of their adventures; they invited her. Using
her passport of imagination she became well travelled, well versed, well spoken, well read. Escapism
found in the tiny corner lamp under the blanket that illuminated the darkness and allowed her to read. To
find laughter in adverse situations, to decorate her walls with the colours of her books, paintings created
by the world she visited regularly in her mind. What would have become of her, if the authors never
believed in their stories, if the words never made it to a page, if disbelief and doubt prevented the sharing
of narratives?
And so I write. For her. For you. For me.
