Home Alone On Sunday Evening

The sun’s going down now, slowly, softly, and part of me thinks I should go downstairs and chop some kindling and make a springtime fire, but really what I’ll probably do is shiver slightly as the clouds rush overhead and drink another cup of tea in my yoga pants and oversize Auahi Kore shirt I got from work. Read my book, get my lunch ready for work tomorrow, go to bed early. My houseguest has moved to his new place, my flatmates are away, and I’m home alone, fask-masked and pajamaed, watching the wind and the water, lazy and chilly and low.

It’s been a very busy, social week: a friend from the States coming to visit, dinners and drinks and parties and bars; many hot chocolates; many long walks, many long talks. Seeing the city through new excited eyes, recognizing little things again, like, oh yeah, there is a lovely waterfront right in the middle of the city here. You thank the driver when you get off the bus. The houses, so many of them, are quaintly perched up on their high hills, peering down to the bays, and there are so many beautiful birds and flowers and trees. The views are stunning, the beach is immediate. It’s not that I’ve forgotten, it’s not that I don’t appreciate, it’s just my everyday, mostly, interspersed between things like doing the washing and waiting for the bus and texting to check in on Sunday mornings. I’ve lived in lots of beautiful places and that’s what I’ve done in all of them, every time. Half awake, half alive, focused on the pavement under my feet, the face across the table from me, the words on the page or the screen.

The sun’s gone, now, the clouds layer up greyly over the hill across the water. The waves will fade next, the lights will go on, and I’ll go put on some socks and a hoodie for my last hours awake. I’ll make another cup of tea, straighten the couch cushions, sleep sweet on clean sheets. Deep dark goes the sky in the windows, loud and long goes the wind. Open, I tell my eyes and my ears, open, open, open.