The Supernova in the Mirror.

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The perfect illusion, reflecting not only that which we desire but also that which we deny.

One hundred thousand people appear scattered like nebulae. 

Attentive, withdrawn, conspiratorial, neutral. Random, like defunct stages of evolution.

Within them and within us is the clarity that we seek, fossilised like the perfect lesson.

They reflect back perfectly – ourselves, themselves, our nature. Opportunities, dreams, journeys, disappointments.

It’s in their eyes, their energy, their words, their deeds.

Labelling them like a solar system in which we are each a burning sun, we orbit each other, rotating on our own axes. 

We unashamedly burn white-hot light inherent with red rage, orange fury, and yellow serenity, because this is our nature, to emit energy in its rawest form. 

These colours that we possess instinctively coalesce, compound, synthesise, augment, aggrandise. 

They surround us, create us, define us, strangely invisible to us even in their vivid lucidity, as we bask, entranced and oblivious, drunk in the miracle of our own existence.

Without one, the white falters and dies, a self-consuming supernova choking on its own life blood, so supremely beautiful in the bright tangibility of its own mortal process.

Let us engage in this dance for as long as we have oxygen and the will to breathe, gazing at the fires flickering hypnotically upon the delicate surfaces until the images become one, unified like the sun itself, and this illusion is over.

Copyright Fiona Troon 2023

(Audio read by Fiona Troon, Eliza Wrenne, Peter Bell and Luke Aldridge.)