That Place

I go back down to that place. It remains the same: the same trees, the same bushes, the same grass and the same old twisting brambles. Of course, over the years - even though it has remained the same – it has changed. The trees, the bushes… everything has grown. That is, except for a small part of it that must have burnt somehow – where the grass is shorter, greener, as though recently shaved for an operation.

Yes, it remains the same place, but it has grown smaller as I have grown taller. What once seemed immense, large enough for all the possibilities of a child’s imagination, now seems far too small to have held within itself so much of my early years.

I hated school. I never seemed to learn the knack of being a sociable person, friends and family were there, but always distant. This tree, at the centre, and all that surrounds it, enclosed in this small piece of waste ground, saw the best times of my childhood.