Home

 The overgrown bushes, woven neatly over the lounge room windows. The chipped clay garden gnomes greeting visitors with their unsettling grins. The small square platform, hoisted by four steps, that we called the veranda. A cluster of potted plants crowding across its sides, each covered in a thin layer of grime. Home.

There I stood marvelling at the same four walls I'd lived between for the past four years. The walls felt so far apart without the beds and bookshelf. I grabbed the box of toys with both hands. My tiny six-year-old self dragged the chest-high cardboard box across to the guest-room. The oversaturated orange wooden flooring hurt my eyes, but an odd suffocating feeling rose when I realised this was the last time, I would stand on it – in this house. All the birthdays, laughter, memories. I couldn't comprehend it then, but I was already missing the house—my house.