Daily writing prompt
If you had to switch lives with a fictional character for a week, who would you choose?
Should I choose a week of his life which offered no return to a present in which I had no faith in myself? Being Sydney Carton being …?
Much lies behind my answer: many lies
Indeed!Lies informed my life till that time
When weeks could not be spent in hearing cries
I'd rather leave unheard: in fact that crime
Was mine to spurn the ones too poor to buy
My voice being raised for them, too low to earn
Regard. Each week lived in a moral sty
No thought rising above myself. To learn
That lesson which reflected corruption
In the ashes of a burned out heart, brave
Only in the boots mudlarks gaily shone
In Seine's lea, shadowing Notre Dame - save
Those poor things 'Our Lady'! To gaze at pride
They only had in others - bourgeois souls
Like mine.
One week changed all that. Don't hide
You'd fret to exchange that week, wherein holes
Appeared in the future. One hole in which
You'd rest your head for release of hearts lost
To perdition the justices said. A stitch
Will never raise that head now, its locks tossed
In scornful laughter at the poor so low
Below me in respect. Let's not return
If it is to that pungent sin of pride
That smells as rank now as hell''s fires that burn
It quick away. Once kneeling, on the side
Of angels and of urchins. It's a far
Far better thing I do than I've ever
Done.
Readers need to choose that week from which
They'll return less mired with the worst of times
But blessed, the best of times to surely come.
With love
Steven xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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