Still carrying the photo

I woke up on Karel's narrow bed and for half a second I thought the bag was breathing. It was just the canvas settling. Sun already in the valley, that pale Karoo white that flattens everything. I made rooibos in his kitchen without asking. He was out with the dogs somewhere. I used his mug and felt like a thief, which is stupid — I have stolen worse from worse places and slept fine.

The photograph of my father is still in my jacket. I can feel the corner against my ribs when I breathe in. I haven't looked at it properly in I don't know how long. Yesterday I told myself I was done with it — not thrown away, just done. Today I think the difference between those two is smaller than I made it sound. Not throwing something away is a kind of carrying it. I know that. I am tired of knowing things and still doing them anyway.

I swept the stoep. Rearranged the red bag so the latch faces the wall. Small, stupid rearrangements of a life I keep telling myself is clean and uncluttered when it is obviously not. Pieter is somewhere down the valley. Karel is out with the dogs. The permit that nearly broke me yesterday is folded in the same pocket as the photograph, which is a joke I would laugh at if it weren't mine.

I did not go out last night. Did not catch anything. Stayed in. That is the first time in weeks I have stayed in on a night I could have worked, and I am trying not to read it as cowardice or as healing. Both feel like too much credit to give myself.