Dust

I breathe in dust instead of air. Particles that have accumulated and settled over a decade in the safety of my shelves, now stirred up by the movements that had to follow a decision. My mucosa roughened and dried out. Each breath a soft rattle through my nose and trachea. It hurts. I weigh books, clothes, dishes, small unnecessities in my hands. Blue plastic bags for recycling trash. Black plastic bags for household trash. A mountain of fabric for clothing donations. Boxes of other stuff: “To give away.” Cardboard boxes, double-walled, four hundred and ten by three hundred and thirty by three hundred and forty millimeters. One fifty-meter roll of bubble wrap, five hundred millimeters wide, two layers. Two rolls of tape, transparent, quietly unrolling, forty-eight millimeters by sixty-six meters. A list of all books with moving box numbers, authors, titles, ISBNs, and weight. Dresses, towels, blouses, socks, pants stuffed between books, plates, glasses. The boxes should not be heavier than twenty kilos. They have to be carried from the fourth floor to the building entrance, there is no elevator. It takes three hours to get everything downstairs.

The moving van has a capacity of thirteen cubic meters, a maximum weight of one point three tons. Sixty boxes; a washing machine with a built-in tumble dryer; a red bicycle; two garden chairs made of black painted metal, the matching table with a tabletop made of stone, round; two folding chairs from IKEA, made of black plastic and silver-coated aluminum; a wooden box, empty. In less than an hour, everything is stowed and secured. The van is not even half full.

The apartment is not yet empty: the sofa bed, leftover shelves, the disassembled desk; in the kitchen the old dishwasher next to the coeval refrigerator, a kitchen cabinet; curtains; the carpet — inherited from the previous tenant; the walls stained by dust and of the years behind shelves and closets. But that will have to wait for now. The drivers want to drive through. Twenty hours from here to there. The cab to the airport is coming. Starting tomorrow, I live in a new city, another country. I look out of the old window. I’m going to miss the tree in the courtyard — not my neighbors though.

I breathe in dust instead of air. My mucosa roughened and dried out. Each breath a soft rattle through my nose and trachea. It hurts. But not for long.

This story was published in German on my Story.One account before.

Cover image by cottonbro from pexels.com

Cover design by me

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