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Home.
home is a loaded term
I would ask you to use it wisely
I would ask you to let me stay here
with steaming waterfalls to rinse in
fingers tracing dips and inclines in the dirt
fingers as lost and aching people
walking towards the earth’s general sense
of uneasiness and depletion.
by stilted houses
by sea cucumbers
by small donation
by a deep sense of relaxation
we will dehydrate in lilac undergrowth
in blushing petals of ancient painted trees
all wrapped up in branches
the sun sucks out the air.
〰️
My first home was a tiny weatherboard house perched on the headlands.
Walk a few minutes down the street and you’re wrapped completely in the ocean, stretched out as far as the eye can see.
Twirl 360 degrees, and 300 of them will be the deepest, darkest blue.
Most of the year it’s beautiful, stunningly so.
Sometimes the wind howls so hard your ears hurt and sometimes it rains so hard the path to the beach turns completely to mud. It’s good for the microbiome I tell myself as I squirm.
One month of the year the beach is full. Families put up those blue and white tents and eat potato chips and bring eskies and stubby holders and portable speakers and 1 litre bottles of sunscreen and the neighbours ask on my way back how was it? I can’t stand to go down there when it’s so full.
My parents hardly leave the house for six weeks.
They stock up the cupboards and the fridge.
The hoards are here they declare, as if at war, as soon as I walk in the door.
It’s 2009.
It’s my first morning in Japan and Mum and I head to the basement department store, food show.
We arrive just as the doors open for the day.
All the staff stand at attention at their stalls, bowing and singing irrashamasae !!
Irrashamasae !! my mother replies with a wide smile (this is before the days of duolingo and language reels on IG).
We marvel over every single thing we see.
Onigiri. Cherry tomatoes arranged by colour and size. Apples as big as my face. Tiny, perfect salad boxes. The softest mochi.
I spend at least an hour at lupicia tea and finally choose a sencha mixed with rose petals and tropical fruits. Back home, I try to re-create the cold ice tea I fell in love with by putting my new, Japan made pink ceramic teapot directly in the freezer. It explodes. I cry, a little bit.
Back home, I switch my sub-major at University to Japanese. I struggle, but I try incredibly hard. My marks are average, but it’s the only thing I learnt at University that I actually use today, years on.
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