'Blank'

I waved to my cousin, and he waved back; we were both talking into our mobiles. Mum was asking me to step into the compound, to see how far they were in deconstructing the place. They took out all the window panes, the roof was gone. Only a few walls were what remained of my great uncle and aunt's house. There were some shacks where the tall mango tree used to be. It kept their tools and basic necessities. Some workers were staying there until the job was completed. One shack was specifically made to house the ancestral altar for the time being.

I stepped in after the line was abruptly cut. A worker was taking out long pieces of plank out to the front, there was a tractor where the kitchen was, digging into the ground, breaking the cement where it stood each time its digging arm was raised. A lorry was parked in the back road, full with broken concrete and debris. The view of the clear sky was unobstructed.

"So you're free today," said my cousin in Cantonese. "Yeah," I replied.

"How long has the work been going on?" "Oh about a week or so."

Nothing else was said after that. We didn't try to. I walked around for a bit more and said goodbye, got into the car, turned back to look at the place and my cousin one more time and drove off without thinking about anything in particular.