Home

When I was a child, I was lulled to sleep, many nights, by the sound of distant surf. On sunny days, I cycled the lanes behind Hayle, I walked across the farms, I swam in the cold green sea.

When I was a child, I had simple love, undiffused and strong love for the people close to me, and felt loved.

It seems like every summer afternoon was green fields and bees in the flowers. It seems like I had endless autumns, up to my knees in leaves, ripe with potential, the world slowing down, dying, but within that death a rebirth of something fresh and wonderful awaited.

When I was a child I knew who I was.

***

L says, you've even started talking like them.

But you feel it in your blood and you can't help yourself. It is home in every stone in every wall in every lane. It is home in every breath, salty and sharp, damp and heavy with the scent of late flowers and earth.

You feel it in the beautiful, unrelenting green. My eyes are sea green. I captured it and bring it with me. When you look me in the eye, you see the sea that made me, that carved me, that caressed me. You see the sea that lives in me, and our parched summers never dry.

I am still Cornish, despite everything. I still love this land and my place in it. I still know where my home is.

And although there are heavy veils over love, I feel my heart is still strong, and beats with the pulse beneath the stones that litter the moors of my home.

***

Out of the harbour at Mevagissey, I hold my boy, I hold my gentle loving boy, I hold my darling, my beautiful boy, I hold him and I wish we would never have to let each other go. I wish we would never have to leave behind the simple truths of our life, to cloud them over with the dirty encumbrances of everything that we have allowed to come between us and our hearts.

Let me never make the mistake of believing anything means more. I kiss him and I know, with all the certainty I can ever have, that if all I can do is wish him well, I will wish him well. I will wish those I love well. I may wish they can forgive me harm, but that is what they can do, and I cannot choose for them. I can only choose for myself to never believe that anything means more, because this all dissolves, all that we cherish will dissolve, and all we were, all I wish to be, is the sound of singing in a pub late at night, the contented sound of the well loved loving each other, home, safe.

posted by Dr Zen @ 9:34 am 3 comments