faded tin

it’s all written there on the tin, the lines across it in fine writing, scrawled by the sun, the wind, the passing rain beating down. we loved the sound of it, the tin roof of the farmhouse. we wrote our own lines on it, songlines, the arc of us. it was frost under the cool clear skies in the winter, cold and steely, glinting in the low sun. they were our favourite days, the lines written were clear and hopeful, held by our warm scratchy woollen jumpers in small hibernation and thought and potential growth. then the sun arced itself up from the horizon, pulling up the green blind of spring. it was those days that we left our imprint on the tin, walked on it, chased balls up onto it, slid down and jumped onto the soft green grass. it had lost it’s frosty sheen and became dull as the sun became warmer, looping high into the sky past the line of poplars. it began to fade, the lines of every day and year of us written there became softer and less vibrant, less visible, just lines of scrawl on the parched dull grey of the old tin.