Where will the statue of me reside?
When I am a pile of bones in the ground,
rarely recalled by my son,
who has his own life to lead,
and manages to make it back on February 1st,
with roses and poppies to place on a headstone,
where I am identified as a wife and a mother who tried her best,
and a sad girl who fell apart on stage every night for the little time she graced the planet with her presence.
I like to think there will be a statue,
in some town centre,
where I meant a lot to people,
because I wasn’t a slave trader,
or a coloniser,
just a poet and a pop singer,
who liked to pretend she was special,
so labelled herself as “Alternative”.
I can see her,
sometimes,
but I can never picture where she ends up,
because in the flesh,
I don’t know where I belong,
so I don’t know where to set myself in stone.
I will be buried in Barcelona,
but she and I have not shared sunsets and moonlit moments for quite some time,
so I often wonder if she has forgotten me,
grown less fond of me,
can’t consider herself a home to me,
and so I consider if I will be Dartford’s favourite daughter instead,
claiming Kent,
not by birth,
but by sticking around,
drawing out my residence like Charles Dickens,
growing wild and memorable around the ankles of the county,
becoming beloved by the garden of England.
There’s always London,
of course.
Everyone can go home to London.
That’s the beauty of it,
because London doesn’t care how you got there,
it just cares that you stay,
and that you buy your lunch at Pret,
so maybe I’ll buy my lunch at Pret,
long enough for them to tear down some crumbling, unappealing old man,
and remember me instead.
Sincerely, Jennifer x 