When the day came, we tried to play for time -
cheeky games born of sullen nostalgia.
but the house had other ideas: boxes

sprouted legs and started walking,
files took to the air
with a papery flop, and furniture
charged down doors as if the whole fell house was
on a slope.

Roped-in friends could only watch,
their borrowed hands clinging to the bannister.
The taps were running dry
but still outpacing the battered tins
and the pills, packets and scented soaps,
while lamps, secured in bubble wrap, sizzled as they rose,
shades tip-tapping at the car door.

Everything must go. The Earth turned, the house
moved, our bodies last of all: animated plaster-pale faces
with only our still-beating hearts left behind
amongst the dust and broken toys on a blood stained carpet.