6 Comments
User's avatar
Douglas Bruton's avatar

Oh but I do love this piece - the voice and the wonderful ruminations. This is just peachy! xxx

Jane Dougherty's avatar

I’m pleased you like it! I wrote this a couple of years ago when I was having trouble sleeping, and the same thoughts trotted round in my head. I know they’re not original, but I said it my way :)

Kerfe's avatar

I'm always wondering about those choices, and who I would be if I'd made different ones, or if my parents had made different ones even. I have been someone else, before, so I know there are many possible me(s).

And I wonder about those who never consider those things.

Jane Dougherty's avatar

Travelling throws up endless questions of that type. I remember feeling a sort of anxiety when I was a kid, looking from train windows at the houses we passed, seeing toys outside in gardens, washing hanging up, windows open, dogs in the garden barking, and I’d think, I could have been living there. Or watching random cars passing on the road and thinking they were heading for a place I’d never heard of but where they lived and had their lives. It makes the world seem immense and unpredictable.

Yes, me too. Maybe that’s the root of the lack of empathy we suffer from (probably always have), not even imagining what it might be like to live a different life.

Kerfe's avatar

The lack of imagination or even interest in other lives in the present world is stunning.

Jane Dougherty's avatar

That’s true. The ‘I’ is everywhere. The only tense is first person singular, ans in poetry if it’s not about my feelings and what a victim I am of ‘you’, you may as well not bother.