Balcony

There is a one way street in front of my house.

Early morning is the loudest part of the day. The nursery right opposite becomes a house of wailing as parents drop off their kids and leave. A cacophony of human voices, honking cars and the thuds of car doors. And then as if on cue, the clamor dies as the tail end of the last car leaves around the bend.

The only house with a palm tree in the front, is where I live. Next to the palm tree is another tree I don’t recognize. There is a third one to the left, which I found out yesterday, is a lime tree.

In the evening the cars come back from the left in single file and slide into parking spaces left and right. Two feral cats who don’t give a shit about anything, find these cars to be warm metal hammocks to rest.

As sunset approaches, the trees become a house of activity. A horde of little birds chirping among the branches and the cats looking up in anticipation of some down covered dinner. A few people are out on a walk, the two young guys chain smoking next to their motorbikes and a single woman who lives in the ground floor whose spaniel looking to make friends with everyone on the road. The security guy squatting near the gate, talking loud on his mobile phone, to his family in Bangladesh.

On the lime tree, there is a blue, lone, restless hummingbird still looking for his mate.

Through the palm tree blades, the sky is split into pieces of bluish grey, with one holding a moon for a while until it moves out of the frame. A couple with a stroller gets out of their car and briefly pauses to introduce their baby to another lazy cat on a car roof. They laugh, kiss and go inside. Street lamps sport their burning blonde heads. The road is fallow in the yellow light.

The moon moves to another spot among the leaves.

There is a one way street in front of my house.

This street doesn’t take you anywhere in particular.

But it also takes you everywhere if you want to.