i’ve lived in four places since january, and it is june now. five if you count peckham twice. hackney, caledonian road, peckham, homerton, and then peckham again. nine if you count the places i stayed only a day or two at a time. bermondsey, forest hill, pimlico, birmingham. i didn't stay longer than three weeks. sometimes i took up only a corner of the room. i barely left a trace of my existence on the white walls of spare rooms, play rooms and friend’s bedrooms. i didn’t try to bring my intimate life into these spaces. these small sacred, short-lived sanctuaries. i silently came home in the wee hours whilst my friends, or niece and nephew, slept, and sometimes i felt like a child being passed around different parents. this time has given me a sprawling geography of london, mapping the return to a version of myself i thought i had lost. a deepening connection to parts of the city. a knowledge of friends i can call on in times of need. and for whom i can return the favour. i had not lived in peckham before, other than a few days staying on a friend’s spare bed, and now i feel at home here. the friends who buoyed me along in this time also feel like home, l, v, n and p, and my brother too. i’ve lived in nine places and out of two bags for three months. at one point, i thought it would never end. there was comfort in the movement being permanent, as stability is what i was running away from in the first place. memories of drifting anchorlessly across the city
