The Story

The story is mottled—unclear, like a rain-stained window pane or the smudged colours of a ripening apple. There are pieces of it, fragments—a book with pages missing and torn corners; incomplete—as it should be, really, or as it inevitably always will be; as a story can never be told in totality: there is always more detail possible to add and parts omitted.
Memory is never the best testimony anyways—now you see it, now you don’t—and possibly never will again. Experience gets lived and lost in a maelstrom of brainstorm, buried in piles of stones like sea-glass pebbles broken and strewn. Sometimes hidden—like a bottle within a paper bag; or hermetically sealed, never again to be revealed. At times, memories glint up from within—glass prisms of broken glass, barely perceptible, but a reminder they are there—were there—and have a story to tell.

The copyright of this post belongs to Monica Jenkins

Responsibility

We are born into a world of life. We breathe living air, stride upon living soil, swim in a living sea. The earth yields plants that grow and nourish its inhabitants.
But we don’t perpetuate life. Like sparks on a leafy forest floor, we ignite and consume; fell trees and smoke the air.
We create death.
We sculpt elephants whilst the real ones are being slaughtered and decimated. We form inanimate objects that don’t require living water to keep cool or clean air to breathe.
The sculptor tips the scales with his artistic thumb and upsets the balance.
We cannot change what is past, regenerate what has perished, or return an accumulated mass to its former state of being.
If we do not govern the Earth, we will be left to guard dead men and sunken treasure.

The copyright of this post belongs to Monica Jenkins

Love

What I invented for myself is our love. You were just you— yet another man on the same earth—another face in a sea of faces—the crowd of skin and eyes and hair—blurred and nondescript, melded together and indistinct.
I heard your voice, and your words enticed. I gambled a seed on you—and within your willing embrace, it sprouted. The bud that grew whispered a promise: I would never be alone- never anonymous. Face recognition would yield identity.
Now we water and fertilize this love with horse manure and bull shit. You offer it as a bursary to subsidize my initial loan. Can we persist in our invented bucolic bliss? I want to know the truth, but I’m scared of it.

The copyright of this post belongs to Monica Jenkins