The sack
One Monday, when I rushed out late for work, an empty, pale-grey plastic sack was huddled by the gate. Should I take it round to the dustbin? Later, perhaps.
When I got home, it had wandered down the road, wrapped itself round a lamp post and was flapping. It caught my eye. Of course, a sack cannot wave.
Somehow I got used to seeing it about. Thursday was dustbin day, but on Friday it appeared again — breaking cover, perhaps, from behind a hedge.
It had certain childlike traits: dragging at one's legs for attention; failing to pursue a fixed course of action; inspiring a wry affection.
Sometimes at dusk — for a joke it took on fanciful, chemical forms and lurked, changing its shape, behind the postbox.
It was a pantomime of versatility. Some days it slapped up and down on the pavement. Once it undulated up a tree. It hated the wet more than anything.
Disconcertingly, this morning it has gone.
No one has seen it. It is not in anyone's front garden, and I do not like to knock and ask if it is round the back.
Things come and go, and when they go, you feel the lack.
Connie Bensley
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