Where do your feet sink?

He tramps around Melbourne with a suitcase for a home, selling flowers and lunch-hopping for multiple free meals. Thursday morning is library morning, when he perches his large frame on a computer chair and studies his family tree. We meet at Credo over beef stroganoff and cut up wedges of orange. We chat for a while – history, politics, this and that. He has an arts degree with post-grad study in art history. He tells me where his family is from – England, Scotland, Cornwell. It’s funny, he says, I know much more about the British Isles than this place, here.

As scraps are tossed into the slops container, he wanders out the door again, flowers in hand, and feet sunk deep halfway across the world.

I wipe down tables and sweep the floor, where my own feet are stuck, for now.