I exist in the dead and in the living, I exist in strangers and pull them together with some unnameable force, I can rip them apart or mend their souls kindly.
I grow louder as you feel smaller, you sharpen me, you turn me into noise as you distort me and believe that listening is better than understanding me.
You leave me to rot, though I never will. I may play beside your lifeless body, even though you won’ t hear me. I will stay there, until you can no longer hear, no longer see.
You will always carry a part of me. When you hear me, you will remember the places I took you, before you moved onto the modern parts of me.
Or perhaps you’ ll always remember, perhaps I will serve as a loyal servant and lead you to the brighter light.
For I stay. I stay when voices leave, and loved ones, and you will return to me in quiet rooms, replaying what cannot be fixed. I change shape but never purpose.
My purpose is to stay through time, to co-exist with it, to carry on when it ends.
So, what am I?
You ask yourself this, though you already know. You have been listening all along.
Mei-Lin Warburton Winner of the Year 9 Verve Competition
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