real estate.

I am trying to memorise my house.

I am trying to drink it in through my eyes, my voice, my body, as if I could gather its essense in my cupped hands, somehow.  The way the early morning sun slips through the windows slowly, slowly, curious fingers of light stretching out across the wall, coming to rest on an amber bottle holding a faded blue hydrangea, haloing it in pure gold. The gentle creak of a handful of floorboards that I barely even hear anymore, so much part of my everyday that it has become. The way my hand curves to fit the mellowed brass of the door handles, cool against the skin of my palm even on the hottest of days. This house has a soul, a hum, a sound, and it sings deep in my bones.

I am trying to learn these things by heart, to hold them close so I can carry them with me always, take them wherever I go. It's time to move on, I know, and there's a new house waiting to be made a home, to create brand-new memories that will linger like precious secrets on the back of my tongue. But, this place. This place has been my home for eleven years-- eleven years' worth of my skin, my blood, my being-- spun and held within these walls. Pieces of me that I'll leave behind, a whisper of who once lived here, loved here, only heard in those tiny hours before dawn, and only if you know just what to listen for.

Eleven years is nothing-- the blink of an eye. But sometimes, just sometimes, eleven years is everything.