Leaving
We had a globe once. It stood on a plastic axis, slightly off-kilter, its map yellowed. It wheezed when it was spun.
I have this vivid, golden-hued memory of tracing unseen paths with the kids when they were small. I can see how their hands held the whole world; how little fingers skimmed over names, seas, mountains.
Now, we four are suspended in a sky that hasn’t seen sunlight. The sound of engines seem to strip noise – like being underwater – and we move in a slow circle around sleep, waking, and feeding. Heads loll forward. Feet spill into aisles. A baby fusses, and I watch it being rocked in rhythmic frustration in the weak red light from the occupied toilet sign.
I have lost my bearings.
Eight hours still to go – but haven’t we already been motionless in the sky for days?
It’s the first time I’ve had a sense of how big the world really is.
The house we’re about to sell
When I’m lying in bed, I can see tulips in the stained-glass window in the ensuite, the colours leaving prisons of bright on the floor. The kitchen, now new – sleek – once had a plastic swing bolted to a beam, where I’d push the baby while cooking dinner. There are panels of fractured glass in the wide french doors – exuberant play in a spiderweb of destruction.
The nature reserve bleeds green through the glass. Early mornings bring whip birds, lorikeets, sulphur-crested cockatoos screaming into the new day. Bearded dragons sun themselves on pool tiles. A discarded snakeskin hangs opaque, translucent from a branch. In the spring, wild mock orange flowers bloom near the abandoned chicken coop.
When we first moved here we played old Motown on records that spun in lazy hiccups on the turntable, the static crackle a prelude to golden noise. We’d sit by the fire at night, left doors unlocked and windows open in the middle of summer. I thought we were happy.
Over time, we watched our children learn to walk here in straight-kneed tottering steps, surprise spilling over their small faces, arms outstretched to us – living safety nets. We watched them first pretend to read and then learn. Learn to swim. Learn to ride bikes. Slam doors. Howl at the unfairness of life. Love with tenderness.
Since you’ve left I’ve leant my head against the bathroom tiles and cried my brokenness into the steam. I’ve held our children as they’ve curled around me, speaking their hurt into existence. For months I looked at the empty space in the closet and felt grief’s greedy stranglehold. This has been my home for my entire adult life. To leave it, means this life is done. That this place will now live in memory alone.
How do you let go of a whole life?
The woman I was, am, and could have been follows me around this house like a promise. Now, every time I leave, I touch the rosemary, wilfully stubborn in the chalky earth near the path.
Natalie Grant is a Brisbane based poet, who is currently working on her first collection for publication. She has a Bachelor of Creative Industries (Creative Writing) and teaches secondary English at a girls’ school in North Brisbane. Her poetry explores the passage of time, and the glory found in small moments.
Locative Magazine 