Public transportation holds a special place in my mind. I have devoted many a song to it and when I can, I take the long route. The shaking and stirring I require are subdued on a long tram home. The shiny sun that stings the eyes releases mild tones of ease everyone should taste many times throughout life. A wanderer I label myself, yet I have wandered nowhere.
Not yet
You were the real wanderer. Walking in stride with a cream coloured hat with a wide brim. Your broken skin dusted with a thin layer of crushed wood. Making chess pieces or makeshift cuttings to replace old tattered ones.
The shifting sands of dunes gleam outside my speeding car. Stop and pull over. You must. You can't not. Do it and I promise you'll be in good hands. It separates and reveals a lonesome lamp. I took it from my grandfather's house. I took many things that I had no use for but that I thought were sentimental. In reality, he probably put no more notice to these items than he did to a single panel of his deck. I create a scene in my room using these forgotten parts.
A rushing wave. A dark night with a shimmering moon. On the little red boat, he made with his hands, he very carefully used glue to add the 2-inch boom to the miniature sail. I sit on this boat. I sail and use his broken blue lamp to inspect the deck. I wish to see if any sirens might have washed up on the front. The long passage I have chosen to take was merely with the idea that he might enjoy doing it with me if he was still around. Would he have loved it? A solemn traveller. He seldom talked about boat travel but he did have many. The scene I create in my mind is a place I return to often. The Aarakoon. A town in Australia that he named one of his boats after. On a peaceful night, the waters calm, we sit and our chairs along with the tide. A bottle of red wine, scarcely drunken. His blue rusting lamp hanging and squeaking. One of the only lights in the cabin. In hand a warming bowl of soup he lovingly made, but in actual fact I made but he conjured the ingredients for the nourishment. Outside the round windows with large metal bolts, a darkening sky confirms our choice to be hidden inside. The tattered skin on your hands rubs against your corduroy slacks and you show me images of your time in youth. What a wonderful time that is. We would laugh over rude jokes. He would sincerely compliment the characters he would come across during his time. Maybe an airplane would fly overhead, not wilting our conversation but definitely halting it, at least until he had done his due diligence of finding out which make and model it was.
If I could have that, and only that, quite possibly, my sunken longings would be fulfilled. My loathing of the fact that you left me without witnessing some success I could have found can be forgiven. I know it was not your choice. Nor anyone else. I love you and miss you when I am not with you, which thanks to the circumstances is always
I have taken an old Altoids box from your bedside drawer. I have taken your copy of Don Quijote. I have taken your miniature boat, a vase, silicon seagulls that fly on a string. Two pieces of wood you painted smiling faces on. I assumed that you would no longer be needing them, so I hope you forgive me.
I think of the times I was a brat, Sorry about that. I really was just learning, and I assure you that I have shed that version of me. Your grandchildren, although on wobbly footing, all have taken fragments of you into themselves. Your science skills are being put to work, and some of us have developed a curious bout of artistic skill.
My cold walks down the concrete street near your house rent space in my head. Your words to not worry until you know what to worry about stick to me like sap from a tree, and stay. Your clothes still smell like you. What a funny thing. Where are you, if not in your house on the corners where you've been for years. Perhaps the fires burning in Australia are to mourn you.
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