flat rearrangement (a story)

 books
     piled on the floors
    of the appartment, the wardrobe taken
to the living room, the bed and bedsheets
all apart (waiting for the night
   to reunite them)

my jewellery box on the windowsill
next to three elephants of different
sizes (the brown one
at the front
from Abyssinia, the middle one shipped
from Bangladesh - or was it
India? - the tiny black one with his trunk up high
a souvenir from Singapore)

CDs and photos packed
in light brown boxes
(the rolled rug sleeps behind the unfamiliar curtain)

the walls of the bedroom (now strangely naked)
have just been painted with "The Cat's Eye" tint, we need

a break of two to three hours to let them
dry and anyway
you have some chores to be done
downtown

then
just before you leave
with car keys (as I'm about
to sneak under the blanket
of one of those dispersed volumes
and treat myself to some
of the stories until you get back home and we

get back to the wall painting)

you say, why don't you
sort out your sandals, why don't you select
some clothes for charity

the moment the words
fall off
your lips
the siren starts somewhere on the
                                              bypass
the neighbour turns to mow
his lawn, some mother yells
at her pack of kids, by now

some dog

is howling like a madman

you think you've meant
something benign: to help create
some order out of chaos, now

you stand in the hall
bewildered:

why should one cry so much

over stupid sandals