Wattle

I am curled up on the back step, in the final rays of sunlight as they lick along the verandah. My new dress diaphanous in the light, sleeves fluttering in the winter breeze.  It will be cold soon, the warmth retreating behind the mountains and I will have to move, but for the moment I am exactly where I want to be. The hem of my dress riding up over my thighs, lending weight to Bingley's assessment that it's a shirt, but it's the way it brushes over the smooth bare skin that made me buy it in the first place. The delicious swish with every step.

It has been too long since I've written. I feel creaky and stiff. Even if what I used to write was not fabulous, it used to come more easily, but now it stutters and falters, embers not flames.

There is wattle everywhere this winter. Perfect yellow honey scented blooms holding in the light even when the days are coldest. I like them best on the bluest of days when they glow. It is dark, often, when I leave and come home now, and so I don't see the colours, but even in the dusk the wattle glows.