6.12 am
I like to walk early morning. To see the cars covered in frost lining the curb. The windscreen glass crystallised by frozen dew. The sun only starting to light the sky, a few pink clouds pepper a brightening blue.
The coffee shops are setting out furniture. A group of cyclists passes by, and then quiet. The birds have awoken, a choir of sounds distinct to each. A V formation flies across a clouded sky. Bin collection’s due soon, I can hear the truck’s distant growl.
The air is fresh, cold on my skin. The way I like. The kind of morning that only exists in the in betweens. In cooling Autumn, warming Spring. A fog has settled over the empty block on my street. Grass has grown where public housing units were demolished there, under the fog. It’s been fenced off for years. The April dew makes the grass appear fresh, a field rather than construction site.
Across the street a man walks his dog. A bird is collecting twigs, odds and ends for a nest overhead. Its feathers tinged with blue green, oceanic and reflective of the sunlight now glowing on the horizon.
Lately I’m too tired to walk like this. Early morning. Frosted sunrise. The sheets of my bed envelop me for hours longer than I’d like. My legs stiff from hours on my feet the nights prior. There is a quiet in these hours. On these particular days. A holiness. A short calm before a storm of traffic, bustle, day to day. The streets I walk to get me here or there suddenly teeming with novelty. An old sign for a Tyre shop whose yellow paint has been slowly eroded over decades. A nespola tree in my neighbour’s yard, like the one that grew so tall over Nonna’s gazebo the aged wooden roof caved in. A makeshift structure of my Nonno’s, my only acquaintance with him but for a votive candle on his shrine.
Books lining a windowsill arched in stained glass. A car radio playing morning news, a lighthearted voice presenting as the tradies unload its trailer. A lemon tree overhangs a brick wall, full of unripened fruits. I’ll come back to pick a few, if I remember to.
Carla Costantino is an emerging Naarm based writer, blurring lines between prose, auto-fiction and personal essay. Her work careens across genres, finding beauty one day and rage the next. Covering observational composition, to social commentary, to compelling narrative. Her bleeding heart is on a platter for consumption at https://substack.com/@ratsinmyhead?r=rcldt&utm_medium=ios .