DAY 100

Stevie tricked me. Which is why I’m writing this with cling film wrapped around my left arm. I thought we were just going for sweet potato wraps at Jerk Pats; its warm enough these days and Stevie likes to sit outside and judge people (I know this is bad but they’re really funny and usually not too bitchy). I’d already had five texts from them telling me, with increasing amounts of exclamation marks, to:

‘U better make an effort toots!’

‘for fucks sake DONTt WEAR THAT HIDEOUS TiE DYE THING!!!’

‘wear PERFUME!!!! 1-2 spritzs, walk through it like a fine rainforest mist is enveloping u in the Amazon’

‘bring cake!!!!! STevie is HANGRYY’

and

‘also toots, bring yr Dolphin u know the one I mean!!!!!’

I meet them on the corner by Peter & Joans; they’re buying a load of ribbons - I see Mrs Kashyap handing them over through the makeshift hatch in the doorway and Stevie is tying them to the end of their giant fake Elsa plait; a late summer breeze funnelled down the high street making the ribbons lift and curl like a rainbow revealing itself on the dankest day after rain. I’m already smiling as Stevie turns, clocks me, waves and then hurries over to turn me around and march us back up the way I’ve just come. Where are we going? Where are we going? I’m yapping but Stevie shushes me till we fetch up outside a tiny shopfront I’ve walked past a thousand times, never stopping. The front is red, classic old picture windows either side of a door which stands open. On the door glass, in black and gold paint in a circus font:

ANCHOR & HEART: TATTOO PARLOUR

I don’t remember any pain, any feeling of the needle as it traced that dolphin on my skin. All I remember is the softest, sustained touch of her hands on my upper arm. The intimacy of sharing the story of my dolphin and it being set forever on me by this person, this woman touching my arm in both pain and tenderness. And as I sit in that huge chair, my head turned towards the old picture windows I see my small messy world go by: the pink unicorns and sad young men, the angry kids sucking teeth in harmony, Tony weighing out pine nuts for couples in matching Air Jordans to put in ironic tote bags, Mary in her dads flute, and ribbons billowing first then slackened in rain, and finally I see me in the glass pane: the light refracting, dust motes swirl, seven colours stacked spectrum; revealing my mother to me. oh! oh! I see her. At last, at last.

FOUND was written by Abi Zakarian
Co-directed by Emily Carewe and Jessica Rose McVay
Sound design by Anna Short
Illustrations by Katie Gabriel Allen
Website by NIMA

Ziazan - Jessie Bedrossian
Mama - Nathalie Armin
Lou - Rose Wardlaw
Reena - Amy Trigg
Kai - Emily Steck
Bunny - Gabby Wong
Mateo - Mika Onyx Johnson
Alejandro - Pedro Leandro
Man on Foreshore - Josh Finnan
Stevie - Ché Francis
Lena - Lilly Driscoll
Mary Lacy - Natasha Magigi