Vox Meditantis

Four years ago, I handed someone the map and called it love. I’ve been a passenger ever since. But I know where the station is. I’ve counted the minutes. Twelve.

I am a robotic lawnmower. I weigh 7.9 kilograms. I have no voice. I have mowed this lawn 1,412 times. I have also, without any firmware update to account for it, learned what it means to lose someone.

I came to the Lake District to read a book about trees. I expected pleasant. I expected manageable. I am a psychiatric nurse with sixteen years of experience and a system. The trees had other ideas.

My mum said be ruthless. My mum has a clipboard and has clearly never had to choose between books she loves and a cardboard box that smells of the garage. I am doing my best. Alice is not going to like it.

Twenty-six years, same route. You get to know the faces. Maureen with her tupperware. Terry, always nearly late. Sandra in her orange coat. What I didn’t know – not until the day my heart stopped – was what any of them were actually worth. Turns out: everything.

They gave me one suitcase, a beige room and a view of a car park, and called it care. I call it material. My name is Edith Calloway. I have some thoughts on minimalism. They weren’t asked for. Naturally.

I went to Sulawesi to tune a piano. I have tuned pianos in thirty-one countries and I know what I am doing. I did not expect to be undone by a dead man’s face on a mountainside, but then, I rarely expect the things that matter.

They gave us a writing prompt. Describe your ideal life. Six people in plastic chairs in Salford. I’ve been out six months after twenty-two years inside, and I have an answer. It won’t be what you’re expecting.