Spring Sale

I wonder if anyone is coming to my stall.

I wonder if they will buy my whistles that I carved, or the teapot. I don’t want to go back home with that teapot. I have never liked it.

I was hoping to get a new one here, at the sale, but I think, on reflection that the sale may have been another day. It’s just me with my stall and I wonder if they will come at all, the other people.

I wonder if they are still even here in the village. I heard someone say in the shop that they were prepared to move on, if they could find somewhere with the same sense of community.

Of course, the shop worker reminded them that moving on is not a serious option. But still, it made me consider more seriously how distant many of my friends have been recently. Such as Dawn, who has been preoccupied with the idea of becoming a liquid. Or Sam who walks for hours alone in the woods.

Oh how unwise it is to think of Dawn and Sam! Dawn and Sam are a displacement model. Dawn and Sam are a baguette I do not need. They are mushrooms in the cupboard. I put them aside. Of course people will come. Of course this is the day of the sale. Look - I am here, and I clearly remember that the sale was today, and the time was perhaps slightly later than it is now, but I assumed everyone would be here early, like me, to grab the bargains.

I am lying down. I have decided to lie down for a while, and sleep. I am falling asleep.

I am awake. I find myself alone still. The day is bright now. Is it later? I cannot tell. Or tomorrow? Either way, I should not have slept like that.

I have to accept that I got the day wrong. And the time wrong.

I am back behind my stall, like an optimist. Like a simpleton playing make believe in the gritted clearing. I reach out and push the teapot off the stall. It falls heavily onto the dry dirt, but does not break.

I pack everything away, and return to my dwelling. I am holding a cup of tea now, and there is more in the pot. The ugly pot. I wonder if anyone will come here and see me.

Steam rises from the spout and I continue, alone, to trace the shapes of the flowers I saw on waking after the sale had not happened.