A poetic story for children and adults.
A short poetic story that invites us to stay with the difference between owning something, belonging with someone, and caring for a life we can never completely know.
This Is Mine begins with the ordinary intimacy of a shared life: work to be done, a familiar touch, the patience to wait for another. Its first-person voice draws us close, inviting us to imagine a life whose experience of the world may differ from our own. What might we recognise there, and what remains beyond our understanding?
The title’s three small words open onto larger questions. "Mine" can express affection, belonging, or a claim to possession. How do we hear the difference? The story brings these meanings into contact through relationships with one another and with the land, asking what care requires when lives are bound together but power is not equally shared.
There are several ways into this work: through the rhythms of labour and rest, through memory and an inward life, or through the movement between silence, song, and listening. The accompanying commentary returns to these details, considering both the possibilities and the limits of imagining another being’s experience. Together, story and commentary invite us to attend to a life beyond its usefulness to others, and to consider what it means to know someone well without claiming that all they are belongs to us.
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A full size extract follows from the artwork.
