The boy looked younger than his age, but for
all that he was still full of the life force.
The kid loved nothing better than running to
the top of a hill and shouting out – ‘This Is Me!’.
On one very sad and bad occasion the world
tried to smash his little heart into pieces, and although there would always be
a scar – he healed enough to keep on running and shouting.
As a teenager, he screamed and laughed and
ran with his heart on his sleeve. Then one day, through fear or ageing, no one
was sure which, he started to quieten his heart and his little soul.
His friends told him that his hands were not
the hands of a friend of theirs – so he pulled his hands up inside his sleeves.
Then his friends told him that his shorts were too short and not the kind of
trousers that they would expect a friend to wear: so he wore trousers that were
more akin to someone who was their friend.
Then they told him that his smile was too
wide and gave away too much of his heart, so the boy closed down his smiling
and eventually his face.
By the time the boy was an older man and had
reached the age of thirty – he had all the friends he needed in the world – but
his heart and soul had completely disappeared and he could have been anyone and
everyone.
When he looked in the mirror, the face was
the face of everyman.
One night, on the way home, when he was
perhaps a little drunker than he should have been, he looked across the street
and from the corner of his eye, he saw a strange man wave and shout. He didn’t recognize
him at first, until the man on the other side, shouted:
“It’s me, I’m the man you should have been.
See, I’m smiling.”
bobby stevenson 2017
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