Chapter 5: All The Things We Don't Discuss

crossing the boundary between childhood and adulthood

It was one of those bright afternoons that seem to happen so often in youth but grow scarcer as one ages. The sun was a tiger in the sky, obliterating all doubt and misgiving before its glare. This was just as good for me, having spent the night in the warrens of distressed sleep, jolting awake to my own rank existence in the pre-dawn, exhausted.

Now in the mid-afternoon I drowsed in the garden with the bees. It wasn't a tamed place like Auburn's garden with its sections and avenues and misty vistas of grass. This was a savage city paradise, wildflowers struggling to tangle over each other, fighting for space and light to grow. The garden was reclaiming the debris of urban life, the broken glass and desiccated cigarette butts and discarded soft drink bottles.

It luxuriated over trespassers.