We all know about being denied our truth. We have witnessed someone rewrite a shared experience and omit us all together. The coaxing feeling of asking oneself: Is that how it happened or is how I remember it the truth?

Our relationship to the people, places and events of a past that is re-presented like we were not there. Or perhaps that we were, but on the periphery – when we stood centre stage.

Not only that, sometimes we see that we have been replaced. Someone tertiary auditioned as the main act. Others have recounted the story many times exactly how we tell it, because we were all there. But now, those very people are regurgitating Version 2.0.

It is absolutely plausible for stories to keep being rewritten, until we are completely written out. As cruel as it may seem; people do this all the time.

We are told to count ourselves lucky not have been reimagined as the antagonist. The convenience of validating the present with a manufactured past.

Discarded photos, letters or recordings, as indisputable as they may be, cannot beg into question the new narrative that has prolifirated.

Reduced to bystanders. We are repurposed by denialists into spectators nodding at the heresy. Complicity eating at our marred faces; we legitimise the lies that will be held against us.