Hostage

Written on 12 April 2013

I’m being held hostage. Two of them.

One’s in charge, but they’re both complicit.

 

They talk out of earshot. The narrative of their lives is private. ‘But if you’re going to do it,’ he says, ‘it’s got to be about me, and maybe her.’ And nothing else.

 

And what’s wrong with keeping quiet anyway? Seems to me our stories are experienced with the people in them, whether many or few. Why publicise it more than it needs to be?

I mean.

There are billions of people, each with a life story; imagination multiples this by quantum physics. So what marks one out to be told to strangers?

Luck, maybe. Talent. Passion, and means. There are more people with interesting lives about whom we don’t hear, I’m sure.

 

I’m being held hostage. There is no negotiation. It’s not so bad, I guess: I’m free, but for this,

But this is important.

 

Poetry, I can sneak past. And short stories. Not big enough for these two. This page is okay. Even as I write, they’ve glanced our way, then gone back to whatever it is they’re doing, mutely.

 

They state: you wait until we are ready to have a story written about us.

 

Poetry it is, then.