A hue of blue,
A tonal white,
A continuous line,
A circle,
A cycle,
A cycle of histories, stories, narratives,
A typical institutional commemoration,
Atypical commemorations, now what would that look like?
Layered histories of real lives,
Real stories,
Real people,
Not pulled from the pages of history books.
Invisible narratives,
Made visible,
Confronting realities,
Confronted.
Powers redistributed,
From the state to society,
Because power lies,
In the histories we are told.
Eighty-four thousand,
The number of men, boys and non-binary people,
Raped, sexually abused or sexually assaulted,
Every year in the UK.
Four-percent,
The proportion of those assaulted,
Who build up the courage to tell somebody,
At some point during their life.
Twenty-six years,
The average time it takes,
For those four-percent,
To tell one person what happened to them.
These are the stories worth telling,
To make the invisible visible,
To flip the shame from the victims to the perpetrators,
To create a society in which these issues can no longer be ignored.
A world with commemorative plaques,
Which tells the stories of now that actually matter,
Not the stories of tomorrow which can no longer be changed,
Those are the commemorations I want to see.
