Saturday 1 September 2012

Moving.


My last night here, sitting with my feet out on the roof, the moon very nearly full, the familiar silhouettes of the trees.

No one takes a picture of me as I sit where I have sat since I was ten. No one has jumped to record the final time so I make a word picture for myself.

In this family we were taught to love real and fierce and not to wrap up too much affection in bricks and mortar.

And I don’t.

Not really, but I will miss this sloping roof and my eucalyptus tree.

There’s a box downstairs with my name scrawled over it, but that itself is not my childhood,

It cannot be labelled or constrained.

It is timeless placeless and wild, it spends a lot of time outside singing loudly, up trees and imagining things.

It informs a good deal of my present.

So, you see it isn’t really the last night at all. This isn’t the last time I will sit with my feet dangling out of a window enjoying the night air and the moon.

I will always find comfort in the smell of a eucalyptus tree, and smile when I find myself somewhere the street lamps turn off at midnight.