Frosty night air.
Fuck it’s a cold one. My cheeks are stinging from the outside, turning bright red. It was much warmer by the heater.
This is always the first bitter part of the journey to my room. Stepping into the outside I look back at the warm little nook I had previously been occupying.
“Night pa.”
“Night Griff, sleep well.”
“Yeah sleep well.”
There is a hole in my jersey (well of course there is, how else would I get into it? But no, I mean to say that there is an unwanted hole.) A hole serving no purpose but to admit the frosty night air directly into my hairless armpit. I have never been a very hairy person, what can I say?
Up along the wooden steps. Falling apart mostly, but a lingering of childhood. From short to long, the steps serve the skinks as beautiful basking grounds during the sunlit hours.
These are most definitely not the sunlit hours.
Up to the tiled step, convenient tortoise protection, not that we have many anymore. Still, wouldn’t want a pesky reptile eating away the rubber of your tyres now would you? Just seems the most logical infrastructure to invest in.
Through the dark garage and out the other side, making quick work of the bricked slope. Weeds grow in between the bricks on this slope. Or they use to at least, you can thank a child’s scrawny hands for the absence. The hands of children fit between small gaps much more easily. Small.
I am at my room. I can’t go in yet.
Pulling my dead hanging keys from my keyhole, I make my return up the slope. Locking up extends the coldness.
The locks are feeling much better; oily, slick, and well aligned.
Back down the slope with the sound of a loud vertical tree shepherding me back the way I have just come.
A large coiling is lying just off to the left around the corner. I didn’t see it last time.
huh.
It looks oh so plasticky. I head inside, time to regain the warmth.