volume one hundred and forty-nine

🧡📙🎃🔶🌇🍊✴️🛕

📍Written, to begin with, at the Point Cook Library, during a writers’ meet-up where the prompt was a photo of birds on a phone line with orange skies behind them. Then it was finished from my only-for-a-little-longer temporary home in Naarm (Melbourne) while on a silent Zoom with my wonderful writer friends.

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“What’s your favourite colour, Lauren?”

“It’s orange. I love orange.”

“I have never seen you wear it, I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

“I don’t have to wear it to love it.

I love the orange of a fresh mandarine from the market, peeled and already being eaten as I hand the vendor my coins and the citrus scent wafts as I walk to the next stall.

I love a throw cushion in an otherwise bland room, popping out as a statement, letting my eyes go straight to it to tell me I am home.

I love the blinding burst of it we get when I sit on the beach in Perth and watch the final beams of sun for another day.

I love carrot sticks dipped in peanut butter, just like my sister taught me on my last visit as she julienned them perfectly symmetrical for our picnic dinner on the lounge room floor.

I love the handmade crocheted carrier I can sling my water bottle over my shoulder with so it doesn’t add to my weight limit in my carry-on.

I love a bouquet on my desk to pause and sniff when I am procrastinating, lost for words or rethinking the ones in an email I am not sure that I should send.

I love the bottle of bio-oil that has replaced my ten-step skincare routine and left my face glowing more than ever.

I love the glow of a hard-boiled egg yolk, roughly sliced over melted nuttelex, on my seeded toast, when I just grabbed the eggs the day before and got to thank the chickens myself while giving them dinner.

I love the glow the lamps create on the wooden desks in the State Library of Victoria.

I love the monarch butterfly that appears in summer, and seems to show up when I am looking for a sign, resting on the arm of the chair I am sitting or on my lap.

I love the leaves that turn the trees to fire in autumn and eventually fall to crunch under my feet, satisfying me with the sound.

I love salty sweet potato fries dipped in garlic aioli and burning the rooves of our mouths on the verandah of the golf club looking out at the ocean with my Nanny and my Dad, as we all miss Poppy.

I love the tiles that line the outdated floors of Montreal train station and how there are stations that look the same in Melbourne.

I love the gold in the photo of the temple my friend sent to me when he told me he prayed for me there.

I love cubing a mango to share as a treat on Christmas morning and the orange I remove from between my teeth for the rest of the day.

I love the heat of the fire as my brother-in-law teaches me how to turn my pizza in their woodfired backyard oven and I lose half my toppings to the flames.

I love the tortoise shell pocket comb that was Poppy’s that I took from his bathroom and use every day.

I love the ooze of caramel that I lick off my fingers when it escapes a pastry or doughnut.

I love the cat that has been arriving in my room a little after I fall asleep the last few weeks, and cleaning my hair for a few moments before taking over my pillow.

I love the matching sunkist beach towels we had as kids that remind me of sun and sand and saying my first curse words without my older sister dobbing.

I love the life jackets that airline staff put around their necks in the safety demonstration which is the step right before take off and I land somewhere new.

I love the bracelet — one of two, the other being pink — that Nan insisted she pay for when I spotted it at a charity market stall in the hospital when we were visiting Poppy, still hopeful.

I love carving pumpkins in Canadian October.

I love the vibrancy of the native flowers all around Western Australia and trying to remember their names.

I love the one fox I have seen in the wild. It was a cold morning walk to work when I was younger, and I was hungover, and I lingered in eye contact until I was running late.

I love the tigers that create a theme in my aunty’s home, that have been constant since I was a child, even when the house itself changed.

I love the hundreds of bees that my best friend cares for and that live in her backyard making the world a better place.

I love a tomato eaten whole like an apple, sprinkling salt before every bite.”

Lovely reader, head into the comments and tell me about your favourite colour.

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here are three things i struggled with this week:

✨ The things I cannot change.

🔮  Living in the future.

👋 Feeling like my voiced needs are being pushed back.

here are three blessings from this week:

🌅It’s an adventure knowing home is my sister and brother-in-law’s yard with the kids, or on the front verandah with Nan and her birds, or in the ocean with my best friends.

🏡 Prayer.

⛈️ Thunderstorm sounds on Spotify.

here are three goals for the coming week:

🍽️ Room service.

🛄 Stealing writing time in airports.

🎠 No more fear. Live in the joy of being an amateur.

pics or it didn’t happen:

hi, i am here! i have this pic my friend took to prove so!

I love you. Now I am off to enjoy my last weekend in Melbourne… for now.

🧡, LD (lauren deborah | she/they)