In this You Are Here commission, Amiot Hills takes us for a tense walk through the past, exploring the things we remember and the things we wish we could forget.
You Are Here – peer to peer survivor writing – was Jet Moon’s second survivor writer’s platform; building on the first: Playing With Fire, which took place in 2021. You Are Here offers an expanded series of workshops, a survivor writer’s group, via Spread The Word, and a series of interviews for the Wellcome Collection archives.
Trigger warning: suicide, homophobia,gunshots
Listen along as you read
Large Fleshy Leaves (C) Amiot 2024
The following is intended to be performed live by the writer, with them dressed as a giant potted plant. The song ‘Noble Experiment’ is to play before and after the speech.
My grandfather had a deathly fear of large, fleshy leaves. Anything from about an iceberg lettuce size upwards and he would break out in cold sweats.
He would have to walk through botanical gardens with his eyes closed holding my dad’s hand.
We think it’s because he fell in stinging nettles as a child. But his brain got the pain all mixed up, and started blaming it on the doc leaves instead.
After my grandma died, we found pictures in her attic of granddad wearing women’s blouses. Pictures of him staring at a man. Mr Drummond. Mr Drummond is not his real name. My dad can’t remember his real name, he was too young.
I think to myself whether Mr Drummond liked plants. If he tended to them while my grandfather watched. If granddad fell in love with how he could make the leaves grow, gently and slowly.
He tried exposure therapy, did Grandad. The doctor gave him a small potted plant, and had him care for it. Water it every day until the leaves grew. He loved that plant, my dad always said he did.
He visited Mr Drummond from time to time after they both got married. Even took the kids. My dad remembers Mr Drummond as a quiet man. All furled up.
And so the little plant grew. And he doted on it. Until one morning, grandma heard a scream from the living room. ‘GET IT OUUUUUUUT’. And a smash. And grandad, my grandad, the man who was so gentle, had thrown the little plant clean out the window.
Mr Drummond shot himself in the head when my dad was about ten.
The glass and terracotta scattered on the driveway.
He blew his brains out.
My grandfather sobbing by the settee.
In case the metaphors are becoming a bit mixed: there are parts of myself I would very much like to throw out of the window. Or rather, parts I am scared I will throw out if they get too big.
And I want to tell him: it’s not the doc leaves, grandad. I know, I know, it’s hard to understand, but they were nothing to be scared of.
Wherever Mr Drummond has gone, I hope there is a greenhouse. That it is full to the brim with the biggest leaves you ever saw. Flesh filled and alive.
And I ask him if he thinks granddad would throw me out the window, if he saw me like this. If I would smash on the driveway like the terracotta plant pot.
And he smiles to himself, and laughs while tending to a stem. He doesn’t look up. But quietly tells me
‘He was kind, little plant. And we are not the things that stung him. After all, he always fell in love with how the plants grew’
About the author
Amiot (they/he) is a non-binary transmasculine writer, performer and theatre maker currently producing work centred on queer archival, grief and ecology. Throughout the writers group they developed their show ‘I Am Going to Build a Chapel in the Woods for Every Dead Queer That History has Forgotten and I Need Your Help’ – a play/poem performance and a real time making with the audience every show of a monument to a different dead queer person. The show is debuting at Brighton’s Femfest in March 2024 with hopes to develop it into a multi-media regenerative project of queer, community led archival. You can find Amiot on Instagram.