A Closed Mouth gathers no Foot.

Last night I sat at my Mother's table and played cards with her, my two sisters, a boyfriend and my husband. The title of this post was something said by S - the boyfriend. It made us all laugh so hard and in that moment I was overrun by the feeling of being home and being held in the normalcy of here.

There are so many changes to the town, and to the people that are here, almost everything is slightly different. Whole new suburbs where, for me "here be dragons" was once stamped on the map. Wanaheda, Rocky Crest, Prosperita, these were not words that were part of my childhood. Now they are sections of the city I have never been to, in a city where I have lived in 18 houses in half a dozen suburbs, in a city where half a dozen suburbs was all there was.

There are also things that are the same and it is these things that give me silence in my soul. The roads still smell like evaporating petrol. The smell of rain (petrichor - I looked it up) and the smell of dust are all sensory reminders that I am where I always have been in my heart. They also remind me that these smells will always be here, wherever I go. The backs of my Mother's hands are still as soft as talc and the couch's texture is grainy. The sky is so blue and all the other colours are washed out by the sun. Everyone spells colours this way.

I do miss WDC. She is a large and vibrant city that sucks your time and leaves you with a nervous and tense energy that almost never fades until you collapse on your couch determined to ignore her, waiting, just outside the window.

WHK is so different, the breeze blows in my open door, and warmth of the passing day leaves a layer of dust on my skin that seems to make my day slow and gentle.