Setting As The World

When I walk up the driveway, a brown gate is manually opened to reach the back of my house. There is our new garage with lovely brownish-reddish earth tones on the rims of the brown roof supported by white cream walls. There are green, gray, and brown trashcans lining up against the edge of the concrete driveway. I sit across from the trashcans and at a left angle, I see the gigantic house standing firm with our new addition of the backyard deck. The house has the same earth tones as the garage. My mother's bedroom and the house deck stands where a concrete plateau used to be. The concrete plateau was a mini country gathering that stretched across the back of the house. I used to play with one of my cousins at this particular spot doing all kinds of games, such as playing race cars, hula-hoops, and catching a huge tie-died bouncy ball with our dirty alligator hands. The only place that is still in my backyard is the huge forestry green tree that came from the neighbor behind us. My grandmother always sends a gardener to cut it down, but the tree always grows to its bushy Afro size that covers our wired gate. Every time I look back at the tree, I see different figures and draw them in my head: a dog, a monkey, a train, a flower, and a human eye. I close my eyes and breathe in the washed out vegetation with my nose and exhale the taste of freshly uncooked broccoli. I can hear the pigeons cooing to each other ordinary nonsense. My backyard smells like a barbecue pit, but my old memory of the backyard smells like a river-green forest.