today i left my home
musings from my final train ride away from St Andrews
today, I left my home.
today, when the time came, i locked my door and walked down the stairs and out onto south street for the last time.
today, i stood in the rain under the green awning on the corner of north street and when the time came i got in the car and i left my home with all of my things and two people i couldn't imagine leaving without.
today, when the time came, i drove away and little pieces of my heart fell away as i went, leaving a trail behind me as town shrunk and shrunk and finally disappeared around the bend, behind the trees, and into the fog.
today, any minute now, these pieces of my heart will find each other. they will comfort each other. they will take as much time as they need, and then they will root. they will root themselves all across town, each piece choosing the place it loves most.
one piece, a very big piece, will go, of course, running back home, running and running and running some more, until it reaches its own blue door. it will skip back up the two flights of stairs it was carried down just a few hours before. it will slip under the locked door and sigh with relief as it lands on the seat by the window, where it will sit, and sit and sit and oh how happy it will be to sit, and observe, and breathe, and smile, at the hills peaking over the roofs in the distance. here this piece of my heart will forever stay, beating most strongly at its first hello to the sky each morning, but beating steadily, warmly, the rest of the day just the same.
one piece will stay, has stayed a year already, next to the bookshop, at number 2, in the room at the top of the stairs where the afternoon sun shines the brightest.
three pieces will go together, hand in hand down the scores, until one piece will give the other two hands a squeeze and make its way to the little library, where it will rest in its favorite seat, overlooking the glassy water. the other two will carry on to the edge of north castle street, one stopping to rest in the grassy cliffs above the beach and the other continuing on, down the hill and into the sand, so that it may swim, each morning and each night, in the pool, with the shells, and the sea glass, and all of the wish stones.
one piece will sit in the leftmost seat at the taste counter, where it will, each morning as town slowly rises, drink a perpetually hot oat latte, and munch on a steamy croissant.
one piece will roam in the green of lade braes, making its daily trek to a tree, the tree, on hallow hill.
one piece will go to each of the flats of those they love most, making themselves feel at home, forever kept company by the love they felt in each of these happy spaces.
one piece will go, walking, running, smiling, leaping, singing, laughing, through the st mary’s gate, down past the lawn, the garden, the classrooms, down the long walkway, running smiling and leaping still as it turns onto queens terrace and, sprinting now, turns right, floating down the stairs and across the street, just a little further now, and stopping, first, to look through the kitchen window, then around the house and through the sage green door, up the stairs and up the little hill of the garden, and finally, finally. finally resting, in the hammock between the trees.
these pieces, they will scatter, they will explore and they will roam until they’ve covered it all, and if they need to they will split into even smaller pieces so that each may find its resting place. and they will be happy, oh how joyously youthfully emphatically overwhelmingly happy they will be, to remain where they are, as they are. they will miss the heart that parted ways with them so that they may remain, and they know it will be different now, but each day they will breathe in the salty scottish air and they will breathe out the brightest, most glowing yellow gratitude, for the simple and divine luck of having ended up where they did.
