Moving

With my inner vision, I see/feel/have become a wet sheet hung out to dry, billowing in the wind, struggling to be free of the pegs which hold it to the line.

In recent weeks, many of the pegs which used to hold me together have gone.  

Since the middle of August, I have purged, packed, cleared and cleaned two homes a couple of hundred miles apart. I have thrown away, recycled, donated or sold precious things that tied me to my childhood and the rubbish of decades.

I have locked two front doors for the last time. One place I have left without regrets. It was a sad building which I managed to make productive but rarely cheerful. The other, where I was a regular visitor but not a full-time resident, was bright and sunny and I miss it as much as its occupant who has moved elsewhere.

I’ve made the process sound poetic because I’ve been starved of word play. In actuality, it has been prosaic, hard work, even with all the help I’ve had. Thank you friends, thank you removal people, thank you all but two of the operators  I’ve had dealings with at the local councils, utility companies and charities.

Two out of three moves complete, I am betwixt and between endings and a new beginning, billowing in the wind like the damp sheet. I know that soon it will be dry enough to take from the line and fold: in this I am more fortunate than millions. I know where I want it to be stored.

But the pegs may not hold. The gale could still carry the sheet and me in an altogether unpredictable direction.

Morven Ash

October 2016