Locked

My lockdown apartment faced no neighbours. Opposite me was a former monastery, dark and unused, the gates bolted shut. 

Most days I lay on the kitchen table with my feet poking out of the window, watched only by the sun. ⠀ As time went on, I grew accustomed to the distant clatter of neighbours' cutlery against their dinner bowls, of the dog walkers surreptitiously meeting on the street below my window, of the scratching beaks of the tiny birds poking through the seeds that lay in the gutters. But my constant companions were the trees of the monastery. The trees were the beacons that brought in life. They were maypoles for the bats that spiralled round in the dusk, impervious to my desperate lens, playfully looping in a manner I couldn't quite fathom. The heat brought lightning, illuminating the sky and rendering them actors on a grand stage: a performance just for me! These trees were companions to the life that flourished from their gifts, unnoticed before, but always there. I drew so much beauty from the power of their silhouettes as the sun faded each evening. Though the night grew silent, life continued.⠀ ⠀ 

I returned to Treviso today to collect some haggis. For the first time, I saw those gates open. I wondered if I'd get into trouble for walking on the grass. They gave me a gift.

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