RINSE, REPEAT

I bought the bottle of shampoo just before we left Toulouse, from a small corner store close to the airport. I buried it deep in my suitcase and forgot about it until we landed in London. We moved so much, in those days, that the shampoo bottle lasted me until we safely lying in a Brisbane park, thinking about the remnants of the house we'd left there two years ago. We unpacked our cases in the sun, letting our clothes and meagre possessions soak up the sweet mango air of a place we had not remembered until now.

It's there I find the shampoo bottle, near-empty, squeezed so much it has bent over like an old woman struggling home. I read the ingredients on the back of the bottle, and follow the translations right down to the bottom, retracing our steps through the world. You ask me why I'm looking at an old bottle, and I laugh and fall back into your arms, and the warmth of the grass.