reflections in wave-water
Dec. 16th, 2018 03:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kesbeaconThe towns in South Wales are more of the sea than the land, in many ways. They start at the coast and lap upwards along the rivers into the hollows of the valleys. They don't go on the high hills. When the seas rise it'll be the towns they follow inwards.
It's a grey day and the whole place is haunted by the past; the scraps of brown stone wall, the blunt coastal defences, the twenty yards of raised railway bridge jutting above the landscape, miles from any lines. Two boys talk in the cafe and it's hard to tell whether they're speaking Welsh or their accents are just that strong; the lines blur, like sea and land in the wetlands.
I understand saltwater and sand, and the names of the birds come natural to me. I'm a different person here; I figure out the new rugby rules in seconds so I can yell at Merthyr or Ponty and none of my other friends get the joke when I try to tell them what position their RPG character would play.
It's a grey day. They poured tar over the pavement by my parents' house to level it out and the old lines I played on as a child are already coming through in cracks and unevenness. This is where the past won't die, breathes bone-deep and uneasy in a rhythm I can dance to. I'm not safe here, I never was, but I am here. The place remembers, and I am known, I am loved.
It's a grey day and the whole place is haunted by the past; the scraps of brown stone wall, the blunt coastal defences, the twenty yards of raised railway bridge jutting above the landscape, miles from any lines. Two boys talk in the cafe and it's hard to tell whether they're speaking Welsh or their accents are just that strong; the lines blur, like sea and land in the wetlands.
I understand saltwater and sand, and the names of the birds come natural to me. I'm a different person here; I figure out the new rugby rules in seconds so I can yell at Merthyr or Ponty and none of my other friends get the joke when I try to tell them what position their RPG character would play.
It's a grey day. They poured tar over the pavement by my parents' house to level it out and the old lines I played on as a child are already coming through in cracks and unevenness. This is where the past won't die, breathes bone-deep and uneasy in a rhythm I can dance to. I'm not safe here, I never was, but I am here. The place remembers, and I am known, I am loved.
