Something strange happened last night

As a writer and photographer, my creative life tends to swing between the camera and the page. After a long stretch with my camera, it feels good to get back to words, and last night the shift took me by surprise. While I was in the kitchen, I overheard my husband, Tom, grumbling from the living room about "sleeveless maps" on the bookshelf. The phrase seemed wonderfully odd, and smiling, I called back, “Like a sleeve in the wind!”

Suddenly, words started forming. I grabbed my notebook, pulled a chair up to the table, and let this strange moment unfold into a story. This is the result of Tom's evening bookshelf battle with maps:

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Tom at the Bookshelf

Part 1. 

Naked maps, unsleeved

bulging in their unprotected form, 

are relegated to their own place on the shelf.

Beside, but separated from the maps whose sleeves remain intact.

That being said, those with sleeves are not all equal either.

Some of the protective coverings gape and flare, untidily,

the original folds flattened, unkempt,

like the button flaps of a shirt that hasn’t been ironed.

He presses those ones back into shape

with fingers and a stiff expression.

Now the sleeved and the sleeveless sit in their divided order,

approved of by the passing gaze.

Like my top drawer, where I place rolled-up vests at the back

and t-shirts at the front, sleeves define sequence,

by the universal laws of maps and tops. 

Satisfied, Tom takes a seat at the piano and begins to play …

Part 2. 

Some time later, on the way to the kitchen, a double take at those maps.

Malcontent creeps in.

Round two ensues, and fingers pull at shabby maps.

Both sleeved and sleeveless are concertinaed open,

revealing hidden dissections, disintegrations:

a rip, a tear, a coming-apart at the fold,

and whole sections sliced out,

for lamination and a life at sea.

Concealed among them, long-lost leaflets and flyers of events past, 

slipped neatly into the origami of contours.

The next morning, I flip the bin lid to find maps.  

Squeezed in beside each other, they are filed for recycling,

reassessed on their merits as robust navigation aids. 

Those in disrepair have been weeded out and tossed.

Both sleeved and sleeveless rejected,

in the great late-night map cull. 

On the shelf, there is renewed order and a lone sleeveless survivor.

No longer segregated, it is set between a bastion

of the sleeved on either side.

Now taking its place among all maps, 

organised in a south-to-north sweep of the British Isles,

from Land's End and the Isles of Scilly on the left to Scotland far right.

The most pleasing geographical array. 

“By 2 am,” Tom tells me, “I found my peace among maps” 

And with that, he climbed the stairs to bed. 

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What started as a compulsive need for order ended with an artistic arrangement in the early hours.  Sometimes the smallest observation can lead to the most unexpected creative exploration.

Have you ever had an ordinary phrase or moment send you down a creative rabbit hole? Share your oddest inspiration in the comments.*

*(btw this is not my strangest. I'll share my collection of short poems written on a rowdy RyanAir flight from Tenerife with you at some point).