I spent yesterday wiping down surfaces, exchanging the summer for autumn goose down duvets, and frustratedly looking for something that escapes me now, which led me to the window seat in my bedroom. Under the lid is packed with letters, receipts, birthday cards, Christmas cards, thanks for being you cards, ticket stubs, leaflets from random old European buildings, postcards from everywhere, a deflated valentines balloon from 1989… I spent some time rummaging around in there yesterday. In the evidence of my life. And I was filled with a sense of incredible loss. Perhaps it was finding Mum’s scrawl over so many items? I found what was once, an ordinary note left before work from B, wishing me a day free of muppetry, asking me to pick up a pumpkin, an onion and some wine from Sainso’s on my way home, signed with love. Sometimes I wish the seasons didn’t have to change.

…when, during routine evictions, I discover
alien pants, cinema stubs, the throwaway
pressed flower amid bottom drawers,
I know these are my souvenirs
and, from these crushed valentines, this unravelled
sports sock, that the furthest distances I’ve travelled
have been those between people. And what survives
of holidaying briefly in their lives.
~ Leontia Flynn

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