TT(O)M

  Dear Alban , I’m sorry I haven’t written sooner. Four weeks ago they moved me from prison to palliative care, though I don’t know if anyone reported it—I haven’t been following the news. The doctors confirmed stage IV pancreatic cancer. They don’t think I have more than a few weeks left. For months I dismissed the dull ache in my belly and back as prison life—the cold, the hard bed, the terrible food. I blamed the weight loss on the same. By the time they finally diagnosed me, the cancer had spread everywhere. Pancreatic tumours are insidious that way; they hide until it’s too late. The classic signs—tummy pain, back pain, unexplained weight loss—I had them all, but I simply mistook for the symptoms of being an old man in a cage. This letter has been months in the making, and most of it wasn’t written by my hand. The squiggly parts are mine. Everything else comes through a volunteer here who has become my scribe and, on difficult days, even helps organise my thoughts. Pick...

Dear Lucy, I am glad you understand that no one has ever held an exclusive claim on my story. Much of what is known about me, and about the events that brought me my small measure of notoriety, now lies in the public domain. There are many who possess the skill to gather, organise, and shape that material into a convincing account of my life from publicly available sources, and I admire this ability immensely. My mother was not a woman who dwelt on her past, and I was very young when she left. What I have, I have pieced together from a handful of sentences she let fall over the years, from the few things others have uncovered after my story made national headlines, and from the particular kind of knowledge a child absorbs without quite knowing he is doing so. I offer it to you in that spirit. I hope you will use this story to advance the wider narrative about the failings of the justice system, and perhaps to uncover facts that, even now, remain unknown. Yours sincerely, Ky ...

Upon the winding, lonely road I tread, Where whispers of the past in silence spread, Each step a thought, each breath a sigh, Beneath the vast and watchful sky. Time stretches like the endless way, That beckons me through the fading day, Each bend reveals a truth untold, Each mile of thought worth more than gold. Till I reach familiar ground, I carry stillness I have found, The peace that comes from walking afars Over roads with all their scars. Here in the quiet, far from sight, Where wisdom mingles with the dimming light, I find the answers I've long sought, In pools of deep and sacred thought. And when I reach familiar ground, I carry stillness I have found, For in this solitude, I find my way, A journey in thought, come what may. Photos, lyrics: Alan Bonnici ( https://www.AlanBonnici.com ) Lyrics set to music: https://suno.com     Follow This, That and (Maybe), the Other : ...

  Follow This, That and (Maybe), the Other :