I’m stacking notebooks cover to cover tightly wrapped
in bin liners and zig zagged to a screeching sound
of duct tape. Years of thought piled on the bed,
the dreams alight with unflinching ideas are
set in a neat row, filling up the space between duvet and
pillows, ready for the last sail upstream, steadfast like salmon
or monomaniacal captain carried away by furious instincts
towards black, thick broth of Hades sea.

Another day of raining soot. The men come in
and I make tea. Milk, two sugars, thank you,
while they scratch their heads. They didn’t expect
the bulk of the life enclosed in boxes. They
didn’t expect half collapsed walls hanging by a thread
of dark quietude, silence spilled over floors.
Their job is to lift mindfully on bent knees
and carry, sometime in twos or threes as necessitated
by the load to the truck gently parked by the kerb,
observant of neighbours, children playing in the street
and traffic wardens, but this?

This requires love. I hum. I bring the tray of steaming mugs
upstairs and we sip while the men shrug, one by one.
What’s there to be done? Let’s get to it.
The body of work has the collarbones and arms cracked.
This way it will fit in the boot, I’m being reassured.
We move out in drenched procession navigating staircase,
the corridor and the front door. I stop on the sidewalk
and in few more moments the job is done, and they’re gone.

About the Author
Kamil Czyz was born and raised in Olsztyn, Poland and now lives and writes in Gdansk. His poetry has been published in Detour Ahead and Coffin Bell Journal, with forthcoming work to appear in Kind Writers, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, Multiplicity Commons, The Dead Mule and Chitro Magazine.