The Difference Between Childhood and Afterwards

I woke up and looked at the flickering red numbers on my bedside clock that read 4:00. Good.

The radio was on, and a glass dog with a tiny black pebble for a nose balanced on it. An old woman was talking with all the serenity in the world. Her voice made me swallow hard as images of a long life in stained yellow flicked through my mind.

I was already noticing things. The plant on my desk. Its leaves against the window, bending up and down in an invisible breeze even though the window was closed (I imagine it was the breeze of my breath colliding with the cold air). I noticed the spaces behind things, and the shadows. I saw an arm in the shape of my blanket, and moved my feet around until it was gone. My feet were warm. The tip of my nose was ice cold, and felt like a droplet of freezing water was hanging from it.

I rolled over and put my face in the pillow. I pulled the blanket over my head, and savoured the gush of cold air. Looking out from under the doona, I grabbed a lighter. There was a candle next to my bed. I lit it and stared straight at the flame for a long time.

I had a notepad next to my bed. It was black, beautiful, leather. I thought about my grandfather. I thought about my grandmother. I thought about strawberries for breakfast, and watching cartoons on saturday morning, and soggy weet bix, and small t-shirts, and scraping ice off the windshield of the car in the fog. I remembered waking up in the middle of the night, afraid.