The Last Sunset

I woke up and stood outside in our garden for the last sunset on the last day of December and mourned the green field behind our house where the Fuzzy could run with mad abandon after the fluorescent yellow of the tennis ball that for some shining seconds is her entire world. I listened to the silence and the birdsong bade my farewells to lazy mornings in our bed, to warm afternoons near-naked in our pool, to steamy dreamy nights of the most amazing barbecued steaks and the dedicated reverent consumption of mindburgers. The quiet peace of reading side by side before bed, to the sounds of insects and predator-prey games played above our heads by prehistoric lizards and fluttering bugs as we talked and smoked and spiced incense drifted in still evening air.

The signs had gone up, cold black letters telling that THE ROAD WILL BE EXPUNGED ON JAN 1. The moorhen that bathed on the surface of our pool and the toads that live in the shoe The Boy had put out for them didn't know it, but we were getting closer to losing paradise every day that passed.

We'd scrounged for furniture, we'd built a home out of scraps, and we'd managed to retain them despite the best efforts of vultures determined to steal our patio chairs, tiki torches and our goddamned clothes pegs. We'd spent sticky afternoons in bed, frantic nights fighting of insect invaders (and by 'we' I mean 'I' and by 'fighting' I mean 'running around like a crazy person screaming "buggybuggybuggybuggybuggy!"' in a most unfighterly fashion). We'd watched the moorhen make its absurd way across our massive garden, we'd scooped leaves out of the pool, we'd braved not having hot water and being bitten to death by the ravening mosquito hordes. It was our slice of paradise, out escape from the rest of the world where there as no sound but what we made, where there was green and the air was cool and there was line of sight and it felt, for once, like we were living in a country instead of a giant corporate entity (LKY Pte Ltd.)

To me, more importantly, it was my symbol, of better things to come, of compromise, of love.

On the last day, we packed everything that had acquired memory and we moved it all, gave it all away, threw it all out. We bodysurfed on a talcum-powedered floor and fell asleep powdered white in an empty room that was still, for some hours, ours.

And then, we closed the door and shut the gate for the last time.

Goodbye.