Slushy

The narrowest light in my room is the leak near the front door, where the sunlight hovers over the floor. Lying headfirst on all fours.

Fresh meringue murmuring at my feet. Ready.
Because sitting on the floor helps you feel the reverberations from below. And the fastest way to time travel they say is via afternoon light.

Thirty minutes part three. The blue chequered floors are cool to touch but if your shoes are too worn, you will surely slip but you might not fall. 

The leak brings me more than just Valencia-n light. It brings me scent from other places. From other homes and from other childhoods, living inside their own culturally designed boxes. Colours and couch frills, smells of shut windows and fresh cardamom on rice.

Teaming with sound and scent, licking in taste and tenderly meeting both hands at the end of my unbuttoned sleeves. I am transported to the afternoon rooms of all my neighbours. Ready?

These other rooms are stacked next to ours. Underneath and above, with their own calling bells and their set of keys. And their own wall clock to set the kids free at the break of moon rise.

The light collected from all the homes lets me see a bit of all my childhood, the afternoons in grade four when naps were constructed to keep us sanguine and calm.

But they couldn’t stop us, not for too long. The afternoons had to give way to time away from leaking walls. Voices we knew to be ours but were of people we would one day visit once every three months.

The narrow evenings that abundantly shone of giggling feet running on gravel, wanting to push the edge of sunset were now free to run. Towards a park, a swing, a cold swing of slushy and the wish to extend these memories into adulthood. 

Swish.