Number Twenty-Five crouches over, knobbly spine swaying with the rhythm of the slight breeze. In his hand he holds a pair of scissors; not the kind you’d normally see in the hands of a gardener, mind you.
These are the type of scissors I remembered buying for my son when he started Prep, the ones with thick, brightly coloured, easy-grip handles and soft-curved blades that struggled to cut a single sheet of paper unless you stuck your tongue out at just the right angle.
I don’t know why he uses those scissors; it must make this ridiculous task of his doubly as hard. Every time I see him out along the boundary fence with those scissors I think about running across the street and giving him my gardening shears, or at the very least my old pair of kitchen scissors, the ones I use to cut sprigs of rosemary from my herb garden.
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