Who Knows Where the Time Goes?
When
my hair turned white things started to change. Shop assistants counted out
change carefully into my hand, young people started explaining things to me
that I already thought I knew, drivers honked me for driving to the speed limit
and glared at me as they sped past on a winding road. My voice seemed to have
become inaudible. If someone fainted in a shop and I suggested a chair, if
someone asked for the time as strangers stood in a queue my announcement was
ignored in favour of the harassed-looking man in the business suit coughing out
the minutes. If I volunteered at a meeting the male voices floated over my head
as if I was a precocious child not fit for proper attention but then a deep
voice drummed out my very words to a rapturous reception. I like my silver
locks that shine in sunlight or gleam in strands under the moon and stars. The
stars still recognise me as their own. In my story, the heroine with the silver
hair finds her power and with one gesture the scales fall, and the hair marks
out the beautiful survivor.
Judy Brigley
Jude Brigley is Welsh. She has been a teacher, an editor and a performance poet but is now writing more for the page. Her work has found its way to many magazines and anthologies including ‘Ariel Chart’, ‘gyroscope’, ‘Blue Nib’ and ‘Door=Jar’.