The Paper

The Paper

That's all I was yesterday. Newspaper lining the recycling box in the vestry. Insignificant. Discarded. Buried beneath an empty tea bag box, a toilet roll core and several ignored claims that you too could be a lucky winner. I was waiting. Waiting for my new beginning, for someone to see my rich potential. My chances were flimsy, I knew that, but hope was bubbling in me.

I could help in so many ways. There are so many possibilities.

I could be stuffed inside a wet welly boot to soak up the fun of puddle jumping days, twisted to kindle the warmth at the heart of your home, torn into shopping lists, made into seedling pots, placed on the floor to soak up the damp patch that always seems to fan out from the umbrella stand.

Make me a new creation of Origami.

With love, patience and glue, paper mâché could give me new life.

Couldn't I be allowed a stay of execution from the recycling plant?

But that was yesterday.

Now you notice me and with a sudden gleam of inspiration there is clarity and vision and purpose in you,like an oxyacetylene burst. The lime scale crust that had dulled your imagination has crumbled away.

I am stripped and torn and placed layer upon layer with thought and care

and as I am formed in your hands I imagine the journey and the destination.

Not only have you given me form but you have made me more than I was, adding hessian plumage and a lacy crown (I love my lacy crown).I can no longer fly up like newspaper, insubstantial as tissue, as activity goes on around me. There is more to me now, I am enriched. And as I gain substance I know you will love me in the same way as the creator of heaven loves such things as the sky has made, because they are born of love.

Finally I am whole, complete. You honour me by carrying me through the transept and up the secret staircase passed the jewel-like window so that I can look out through the clear glass panel and see the earth spread out in patterns below, the spring wild flowers on the ragged moors, the trees all at once pushing down and reaching skyward, the rich soil and the promise of new life all around and I know that I am blessed.

And then you bestow your final gift to me. A sense of such purpose and value.

You tell me that I can be an inspiration to all men because I prove what can be achieved with only simple materials and a little love care and imagination.

So welcome and share the celebration of my birth.

The copyright of this post belongs to Holly Khan