Saturday 19 March 2016

The Shape of Life’s Signatures

It was the letter A that caused the problem
Large or small case variant as a first letter?
Connecting, or not, my new surname to my old first?
It took me months to decide how to write it
now as familiar as the prior one
it flows naturally from my pen.
Years later, deciding not to make a further change,
I kept the name, the signature, and discarded the life
Comfortable in my choice of uppercase A.
Still haunted by another life,
prematurely discarded without consent
before I even had time to write its name
to shape its signature.
The final Y of that unused first name
would it have have the straight lines of neoplasticism
or curvaceously baroque curls?

© Sheila Ash 19th March 2016

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