Words

The clean air of spring drifted through the kitchen door to evict winter from the corners where it still lingered. From the windows, opened wide to the pale sunshine, she could hear the distant voices of her children at play.
Here she was surrounded by the familiar, the boundaries of her daily life and routine - the deal table, the sink and the draining board and the words that shaped her daily life. Shaped it in ephemeral ways; the way of bright packets and recipes snipped from magazines and the little notes she wrote to herself on small pieces of scrap paper.
“Remember flowers for church.”
“Eggs, flour, shoe polish, starch.”
“Collect Millie’s shoes from cobblers.”
“Don’t forget to pay the milkman.”
These were the words of her daily life.
This was her world, this small place of little notes and kitchens, but there were other, bigger worlds and they had their own words.
She stood watching the dust particles suspended in a shaft of pale light and some rose into her mind only to fall and be replaced by others.
“In the beginning....”
“On the Origin of Species....”
“We hold these truths to be self evident...”
Words could shape an entire way of thinking.
And there was,
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today...”
She looked at the late April daffodils nodding in the jam jar on the window sill and back to the piece of paper whose words had just changed her world forever,
“From Admiralty: Regret to inform you...”

© Bev Allen 2013