A piece of past, with a side of watermelon.

Some of my days of work are spent largely driving around Joburg in search of all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons.  Hours and hours spent in the car.  Mostly, I eat loads of watermelon (healthy, delicious, tastes like a holiday), listen to loads of Classic FM (soothing, dramatic, good for perspective) and imagine combinations of words strung together. Sentences, paragraphs, stories, moments, memories.

Here are yesterdays’ :

Gliding her hand across surfaces, she moves around the room.  Grazing the cracked, marble window sill,  feeling the teddy bear softness of the aging, velvet couch,  touching the papery pages of the books lined on the shelf.  She is saying goodbye.  Goodbye to the way the sunlight falls on the knobbly diningroom table, goodbye to the way their cat sleeps, curled up on a chair like a breathing cushion.  Goodbye to dinner parties for two, four, ten.  Goodbye to the tree that took them by surprise by blooming when they thought it long dead.

Goodbye even to the things that are going with her because this is the death of them there, in that life, in that space.

She does this for days whenever home alone.  Walk around the room, breath in moments, breath out farewells.  A surreal, made-up ritual in the hope that walking out the door for one last time will feel only natural after so many goodbyes.

PS.  Braveness.