squirmelia | Highgate (Reply)

I head to the right of the graveyard, looking for the tangled branches I saw from the road. Mud coats my feet, but I barely notice as I am very tired and haven't yet found the people I am looking for. I see a shiny orange ladybird scurrying over a plant that looks as if it is about to twirl and I'm glad I made the trip.

Highgate Cemetery (East) greets me with gnarled stumps, festering, rotting between graves. A yellow-shelled snail clings to a tree with bark that seems momentarily vivid red, purple and green. Leaves are draped over everything, even brighter still. Shelves of sprawling egg-coloured fungi grow underneath the evergreen gloss of holly leaves. I am too busy noticing everything alive to take photos of graves.

Later, when I have given up searching for who I came to see and I'm sitting on a bench in a slight dip near a tree with bright bulbous berries, I watch a squirrel leap from tree to tree and it is then that I hear the squirrel squawk. I had no idea that squirrels squawked so loudly and I wonder about other sounds that I've rarely noticed before or maybe never will hear, like the sound of a real thylacine or the voices of people I've only ever communicated with in text or even myself through someone else's ears.