Stuff

~

her, two doors down

is having a sale 

stuff all over the drive

she’s already peeved,

her only child, a boy, 

now lives away, works up north

conveniently leaving

his adolescence behind

for her to clear out, 

christ alone knows where 

a doll’s house came from,

it started me thinking 

of the back bedroom

I grandly call ‘the office’

from when I had a real job,

long before people started 

the ‘work from home’ caper 

and it not meaning

just throwing a sickie,

I do a swift scan realising

how much stuff isn’t mine

and what if anything

might be worth a bob or two,

what two things I’d carry

out in a fire, easy

the Martin and the Hardy,

I stroll down two doors

and chat to Mary,

ask her if she’s sad

to see all this go,

she says no rather too quickly,

then tenderly strokes 

the doll’s house musing

‘this was mine,

I was never lucky enough

to have had a little girl’.

*

© Graham R Sherwood 08/23