Floating on Flotsam

Cross-legged on the floor, I paused for breath. To breathe into what I was discarding. It was one more time to get rid of things. It started with clothes, some stiffened at the crease as though they had forgotten to live. I was too frightened to touch what had draped me once. I saw a tear through which I could peep into other such imminent tears. I am told that one must not wait to think about what to throw out because that means you do not need it. I wait to think of what has lived with me. It gave me something. What did I give it – my touch, the scent of skin, the wetness of sweat?

Next I raided the cabinet filled with things I did not know I had. Rusting nail clippers, sepia cottonwool pads, travel bottles of shampoos, hair conditioners, moisturisers, lip balm – not willing to let go, I opened caps to smell dead flowers and thick lotions spilling in a watery trail. I tried some to see if they’d still be usable, although I had never used them and the fading expiry date on the crimp said it was history. I wanted a little history to rub into my pores and perhaps leave a burning sensation. I slathered it on my arms and it shone like sticky grease. I knew these had to go, too. Toothpaste that looked like caked saliva and toothbrushes whose bristles bent like autumn grass.

I filled them in a garbage bag and as it stood in a corner, I thought about the wreckage of life. Every sail, every anchor, every shore can be wrecked. The knick-knacks I have not touched. There are places in them, but I know I will because the chipped pieces leave dust specks when I am not walking anywhere. It is delusion.

Is doing away with all a simplification of life? No. The draws were too full, the shelves were cramped. They are breathing now, yet there is still not much space. Each time I detach myself from something, it amounts to getting attached to the idea of detachment. They merge, the fertile and the barren. I am living between deserts and oases.