Class Piece - Belongings
Just a 500 word, PG piece I had to do for one of my university classes. We had to write a piece about the person whose life included these objects: a dead pot plant, a business card, a dusty radio and a silver locket with an inscription.
I am much pleased with how it came out. I asked Dad to proof it for me, and gigglement ensued as he got confused as to the narrator's gender. Or at least, the gender as I saw it - it's pretty ambiguous and can easily be read both ways.
Belongings
I don’t like to go home. My house is a mess, it’s disgusting, barely liveable. But I am just too busy to keep it clean.
My mother, the rare times she might con her way in past the front door, loves to exclaim about how filthy and unhygienic my house is, that I am surely playing host to a family of rats and don’t I know how disease-ridden rats are? After the rats, it’s always the neighbours. What would the neighbours say if they could see this mess? I’d have the council knocking on my door in no time, with written orders to clean it up or else.
I don’t care about my neighbours. I once used to; we would exchange polite greetings and inquire about spouses and family members when we crossed paths, borrow milk and eggs, and collect the mail of those away on holidays. But now I am too busy to keep up the paltry socialisation; my work takes up a lot of time.
I have always thought abandoned houses eerie and sad. What memories do the walls contain? Are they ones that forced their occupants away, or are they memories regretfully left behind? Ghost towns are worse - once a hub for interconnected people and families with bustling lives; now forgotten, a hollow shell. The soul of the town moves away and disperses like dandelion seeds on the wind.
My house almost appears abandoned, except that a completely abandoned house only gathers dust, whilst mine collects piles of laundry all over the floor, mountains of used dishes in the sink, fields of take-away boxes and gently sloping hills of junk mail on the kitchen bench. Everything is covered by a layer of dust and grime; you don’t put anything down that you want to pick up again.
On the kitchen windowsill, a pot plant drapes its lank and rotting form over the stained tiles above the sink. A Christmas gift from my mother, meant to brighten up my house and inspire me to take care of things, it had turned yellow from lack of sunlight and drooped from dehydration, before gathering dust and mould like protective armour against my lack of nurturing instincts. On a nearby shelf, the dust-stifled radio keeps company with the gramophone Sam and I had excitedly discovered at a garage sale. The record player’s needle still hangs poised in the air, waiting expectantly for the house to live again.
Once, this house had been a home like those that inspire all the cheesy, feel-good “home is where the heart is” clichés. But that was before. Before I smashed the frames and entombed the photographs under my bed. Before I started ignoring one half of my closet for fear of seeing empty coat hangers, or worse, jackets and pants that were too long in the leg and arm to ever be mine. Before stumbling across a laminated business card or his grandmother’s tarnished locket could send me fleeing to the city and burying myself in work.
Would love to hear people's thoughts on it!
x Lira