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Kitchen Sill Radio
In the kitchen on the window sill
There’s a small retro style radio
It was meant to keep us company
While doing the dishes and cooking
Now it no longer provides comfort
Sparking spontaneous shuffle dances
Across the tiles, with a cooking spoon microphone
It says one word again and again
And each time it’s like a small hard pebble
Sinking further down into my soft insides.
It’s a new word, which we never heard before
And now it’s everywhere – a constant
It triggers thoughts of the apocalypse
Of how fragile the walls of our home are
How porous and insufficient
And how the world outside keeps changing
Day after day – of how everything that seemed
A certainty is in flux and like slipping sand
The world will have been remoulded
When we finally step outside again
Tamara von Werthern is an award-winning playwright based in Hackney.
You can read more about the success of her dystopian short film, I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire, here.
Her play The White Bike, and climate change book Letters to the Earth, featuring her contribution, are available at Pages of Hackney bookshop on Lower Clapton Road, which is currently closed but still selling book tokens.
