Unchronicled

This piece came about stretching my writing muscles: get a book, any book and the first verb or noun or substantial other word on page 7 is the prompt. Set your phone or an egg timer for 15 or 20 minutes and write, no self-criticism, no scoring out or looking back until the alarm has sounded. Most likely you will have written total nonsense but now and then you will have a sentence or a paragraph you may like.

I am far from home. I am all alone in a cold country; the sun is weak and my bones, though young, are cold. It is supposed to be the hottest time of the year but I need to wear all my clothes and a warm jumper to stop shivering.

People look at me in a funny way. They probably think I am ill, or on drugs, or both.  They walk around me, as if I am contagious. But I am not: I am alone, far from home in a cold country.

It worries me that it will even get colder. They say that in the coldest time of the year there will be snow.  I have never seen snow apart from on the television or in books. I would like to be home when it snows. I am afraid my feet will become like the frozen meat in supermarket freezers. Can that happen? I think most people here have warm socks and good shoes to walk in the snow: I have none.

What would happen  if I die in this strange land? I think about that and sometimes dying doesn’t scare me much.  The moment itself, maybe, but not being dead. Will they put me in a fire? Or will they dig me a grave in the frozen earth in this strange country? Would someone mourn me? Would they try and tell my family? Probably not.  I am alone in a far and cold country: I am an unchronicled migrant.

They don’t want people like me. When I tell them I fled war and persecution they don’t believe me. When I tell them I am from Uganda they don’t believe me. When I tell them I am 17, they don’t believe me.  When I tell them I am gay, they don’t believe me. I have no papers, no proof, I am unchronicled.