One fine day he decided he had had enough. For almost 40 years he had tried to live the way others expected him to. But however hard he tried to adjust, he never quite succeeded. It all remained a play. A play so well rehearsed he could almost at times forget he was just playing a role. But then something would happen, a meeting, a comment, a passage in a book or an unexpected vista during a walk or drive; there would always be something that brought him back to the sense of the unreality of who he was trying to be.

And now it had to end. He couldn’t find the power in himself to put the mask back on, re-find his place in the script and dutifully perform the next act of the play, as his part demanded. He had lost his will to pretend.

He didn’t even take the trouble of packing or taking anything with him. Exactly the way he had dressed that morning, in his t-shirt and jeans, he walked out of his house, knowing he would never return there.

He walked up to the end of the street. On the corner he turned and saw his house standing on the horizon like a miniature. Which gave him an idea: with one eye closed he stretched out his hand in the direction of the house. Very carefully he pinched the tiny building between finger and thumb and started to pull. With some wriggling and gentle tugging, like a dentists pulling a recalcitrant tooth, he managed to detach the house from its foundations. He shook off some dirt and sand and put the little gem in his pocket.

Happy and content he walked away. Now he would never be homeless – wherever he went.

©Bard 2020