The Vanishing Places.

When I was younger, I thought a family could only move house once. I thought my forever home would be a two-bedroom weatherboard on the outskirts of Brunswick, with a painted-blue-front-fence low enough to climb, and a gate that squeaked when you shut it.

But I write this in a bigger house, with bigger words, and bigger ideas that seven-year-old me could never comprehend. Seven-year-old me could never comprehend that she was right; Robert Street was our forever home, and now I am homeless with a house.

My childhood is the roof over my head, the threadbare rug that hugs my shoulders, and the cat that sleeps at the foot of my bed, day in and day out; childhood is what I miss most.

I miss the vanishing places.

I miss my secret spot, nestled between two 15-foot walls of blue stone overlooking the Merri-Creek. With a notebook in hand and a pen in the clutch of my grubby fingers. Where the water ran wearily as if it had no other place to be. Neither did I - besides my forever home, curled up in my favourite armchair, watching ‘Teen Titans Go’.

I miss my brother’s sixth birthday. I was four, watching him climb a tree from the sandpit below. His foot broke through a thin branch, and he fell backwards beside me. He cried; I think I did too.

I miss the same dinners that we had every night. An IKEA plate consisting of sausage, rice or couscous, boiled carrot and broccoli, with an unhealthy helping of tomato sauce on the side. I miss throwing up on my birthday after eating a whole sleeve of chocolate creams, and the look on my father’s face when he caught my thievery in his very two palms.

I miss the vanishing places.

I miss when I felt sick before bed every night. Stories had me convinced that death comes in your sleep, and that your murmured nightmares would die on your tongue. And I miss the night walks around the block with dad, or learning how to ride my bike, or dragging a 5-kilogram bag of cement from hard rubbish to my forever home to fund my unpermitted pond project. I miss breaking windows with cricket balls, cutting holes in the trampoline netting, and tearing up my parents' lawn for rock gardens.

I miss my forever home, and I miss who used to live in it.

I miss who used to sleep over, and who I used to have Christmas with. I miss the little girls my cousins were before their dad got sick.

I miss the trip to Kennett River before my grandmother passed - and how she looked in her hospital bed listening to my stories, to be discharged only to pass away without me. I miss those who were supposed to be my forever people.

I miss the vanishing places.

Because that is what places do, just like memories. They vanish, slowly and then all at once. The milkbar becomes a soulless flower shop. Your neighbour’s apricot tree is cut down, and you will never taste the tartness of their marmalade. Your secret spot is fenced off “for caution”. And the house you were raised in is repainted, refurbished, and restyled - made to look like all the other faceless buildings for faceless people who vote for the faceless barons. The barons that profit when forever is stolen, when the magic is eaten without a movement of the jaw. 

The new tenants will never know its charm, how it smells in the winter, or the exact creak in the hallway outside the bathroom. Their neighbours won’t know the cracks in the pavement that are uprooted and refilled, or the weeds between the paving stones that eventually wither. Just like that, your home is returned to the rental cycle. Houses are yours until someone with more money decides it is not. 

I miss the vanishing places.

We are told we can never keep things forever, but naively, we compete against prophetic change. We argue with our parents and dislike the change in scenery, no matter how beautiful. We collect souvenirs of our forever home, in chipped mugs, tarnished rings, and Christmas ornaments that have survived a dozen moves. 

The truth is - I have never been homeless. I have walls, a roof, and a bed to sleep in. But my home - the kind you feel in your bones, is gone. Whole streets can vanish; black holes swallow the light from street lamps and the barks of rowdy dogs. Silence stills, and the laughter of your siblings slowly disappears - so slowly you begin to forget it was ever there. 

I miss the vanishing places. 

You grow up, your attachments to the forever become a subject that binds you to a past that now is so bittersweet it pierces like stinging nettle. Your relationships are weaker, yet strong in a different way. You don’t talk to your elder brother, you don’t go on night walks, and you don’t paint anymore - even when you want to. You don’t write stories, you write monologues, and you don’t read them to your grandmother, your poetry in filled notebooks becomes late-night finds, because you don’t rhyme anymore when there is no one to rhyme for. 

Seven-year-old me thought forever was a place. Now I know forever is a self-torment you drag with you, until it is forgotten, until it is repressed with new material. 

And still, I miss the vanishing places - I miss what was supposed to be forever. 

I miss you.