Moving Day: 2018

Image by Paloma Nicholas

she is the house, her body and mind run through it, her face will stay here forever.
this is her house: it belongs to her and it is she and she is it and she belongs to it

It is moving day again.
She watches the commotion. Boxes stacking and rolling, yelling voices, an anxious hurry.
She sees a small gold object drop on the floor. Her eye zooms in on it. It is a ring. It has a small mauve jewel in the center.
Perfect. Another one for the collection. She can feel the skin in her face and ears tingling with excitement, so she calls out to the loose gold ring on the floor. Something always falls on moving days.
The humans leave things behind. Always. The flow is constant, and every time it is the same. Different people but its all the same. Sometimes it’s a ring, sometimes it’s a coin, sometimes it’s a pin, sometimes it’s a wire. Last time it was a key.
She has been collecting the fallen and forgotten since the beginning.
Her face tingles as she reaches out to her fallen sister. She widens her pupils, and she feels the gold ring with the mauve jewel brush against her eyelash. It settles into her left temple. She feels it welding into her soul—the jewel rests halfway below her skin.
She breathes in and out. Moving day.
When it is quiet and the boxes are gone, she closes her eyes. Each new piece that comes to her makes it more difficult to leave, every moving day makes her head heavier, the metal binding her to the house. She wonders how many more rings and coins and pins and wires and keys it will take to imprison her completely.

she is the house, her body and mind run through it, her face will stay here forever
this is her house it belongs to her and it is she and she is it and she belongs to it

The second phase of moving day begins. She feels the front door open. The words are the same but the voices are different. It is always different voices, yet same words.
One two three four,
four sets of legs stomp through the door.
She glances at the boxes as they roll past, the feet walking behind each cart.

she is the house, her body and mind run through it, her face will stay here forever
this is her house, it belongs to her and it is she and she is it and she belongs to it

Is now her time? Will something change?
She does not want to be stuck forever.
She wishes she could control who moves into her house. It belongs to her, right?

wrong