I know where I live

I know where I live. I know where I live because the signposts and landmarks tell me so, but this is not my home.I remember watching the drama Chernobyl on the TV, before all this happened.

This is where I live now.

My home was full of laughter, and hope. Children played in the park and ran in and out of the houses. Music drifted from the funfair, babies cried, songs were sung.All that has been blown away.

One catastrophic event happening deep down in cells so tiny that scientists have dedicated their life to finding them. One catastrophic, unseeable, unknowable chain reaction that became the destroyer of worlds – and it is all gone.

What is left is outlines, empty shells that stand, reminding us of what has been lost. If you listen carefully you can tell yourself that you can still hear the music from the Ferris Wheel in the distance, but you know that it is just creaking in the breeze.

Everything that you have knew is covered in a thick layer of toxic, devastating dust. You try to tell yourself that there is beauty in it, people try and tell you too, but you know it’s not true. The dust is there to smother the life out of your world and it will take a lifetime to blow away.

You know too, that everything that follows will be forever altered. It cannot be swept away and started again. Everything from this point forward will either flee, or be corrupted, contaminated, damaged. Broken.

And yet I cannot leave, because this is the only home I have ever known, the one where I built monuments to you. I cannot up and leave you behind. And there is nowhere to go. I am forever altered now and that contamination cannot be washed off – I will never be permitted to leave – locked in.

But one day things will begin to grow again. The funfair may never revive it’s tune but somehow, someday, it will be replaced by something fresh and wild. A new monument to you, which will give us life.