When I was about five, the concept of anything far away was the top of the street. It felt like the edge of the world back then. The trees seemed to stop growing. The sky stretched out, and the sun baked the cracked road beneath it. In my part of town, the road had been worn smooth by years of use. Jagged patches crept along the sides where the asphalt had crumbled away. These patches left no room for a curb. Grass and gravel started to blur together. They were scattered with the glint of broken glass and a ring pull from a can. It looked like the remnants of a world that had long stopped caring. Everything felt abandoned under the dry, sky.

Almost at the top of the street stood a yellow fibro house, simple and unremarkable, with no front garden to soften it—just a patch of mustard-coloured grass that crunched underfoot. I knew I was almost too far when that house came into view. It was the marker. The sign that I had wandered close to the boundary of safety, to the point where I wasn’t sure I should be. I never went that far alone. I always made sure my older brother was with me or that I was gripping my Dad’s hand. That house and what lay beyond it were too unknown to face without someone beside me.

Two older ladies lived there—twins. They sat out on the large air conditioner unit, every day, always silent. They never spoke, not to each other and certainly not to me or anyone else who ventured near. They just sat, their wrinkled faces tight and scrunched up, like the cracked surface of the road, watching. Always watching. Their eyes would follow you, quiet and unblinking, as though they knew something about you that you didn’t yet understand. They wore woolen sweaters, despite the heat, with dresses underneath and brown socks that never quite stayed pulled up. I never stayed long enough to figure out much else about them. As soon as I felt their gaze, I’d hurry back down the hill, feeling the weight of their eyes still on me until the curve of the road finally hid me from view. And me and my brothers would pretend to be them, giggling together, they were this unknown we felt we could mock as kids. Mock the unknown.

These days, I know they were just two quiet women, probably as old as my Dad. Sweet, really. They kept to themselves, as people do, and that was all there was to it. But I didn’t know that back then. Back then, they were sentinels, watching over the end of the street, keeping me from going too far. And sometimes, now, I feel like them—sitting quietly, looking out at the world as people try to push themselves past the barren parts. Trying to get a little further, beyond whatever desolation they’re caught in, whether it’s a quiet cool corner store, a still and dusty bush track leading to a swimming hole, or even an airport to somewhere far away. I know that feeling now—of being too far. Of feeling like, if I shouted, no one would hear me. That it doesn’t really matter what I do, because, in the end, I just need to find my way back home. Down the hill.

But what if home is gone? What if you make it back down the hill, and nothing is where it used to be? That’s where I am now, back in Melbourne. Working, moving from one day to the next. But I still don’t know what home is. I could place all my belongings out in the street, and it wouldn’t make a difference. I’d still feel the same. Too far away from something I once knew as home, and yet so close to the place that should be it. Though I tell myself, usually its then that you are too close to an old home. And very far from your new home, whatever that may be. A physical place, or a love you have never known yet. And the twins are watching you verge onto that new place, down the hill. Safe.