yeah i know

It's almost a year since I flew this city brokenhearted, only to land in another city and fall in luv and in lust with every boy I passed on the street. Aside from all the perfect courtships and romances I imagined in an if-only-I-lived-here-forever-and-wasn't-leaving-tomorrow-we-would-love-each-other-always-and-I'd-never-know-what-heartbreak-is sort of way, I fell real in love with the sights and sounds and youthful energy and beautiful but still somewhat gritty charm of Brooklyn. Streets of the best dressed rubbed up against Old Poland or Little Italy. Gentrification may have run rampant, but Brooklyn's roots still stretched long and deep. And I know the same can be said about my own city which I know and love, but there was something magical about Brooklyn and my three days spent with it last year. Perhaps this allure was caused by just the simple unknown of the people and places and the rounding of unknown streets only to encounter more unknown people and places. But. I liked to, and still do, think this magic was caused by much more. Brooklyn is magic. Just walk Bedford at 11am or 11pm and you'll be met with the same energy and understand why. Still doubtful? Listen to this song and everything I've gushed will be imagined and proven true.

merry merry merry

I remember clutching the phone tight to my ear in a dark still teenaged bedroom long after I stopped being a teenager at this very time on this very day for seven years. Waiting for the clock to blink twelve so I'd be the first to say those two words through a phone line across the city and sometimes even more cities to reach his very ear. It seemed important then but today the clock blinked twelve and I reached over and gave my mom a hug and really, there's no other place I'd rather be.

Merry Christmas to you all.

12.23.95

It's December twenty-third and that means it's another year since you left us and I counted backwards today and thought to myself "fourteen years, how can that be" and it's a lifetime sometimes and at others it's like yesterday I sat beside you on a couch or just a week since I caught sight of you through a slit in your bedroom door or at most a month since I held your hand and sometimes it feels like a day a week a month because I can still close my eyes and remember the sound of your voice and what it felt like to ride up that escalator every summer and see you waiting at the top.

But then I also remember that your house is no longer yours and maybe you wouldn't recognize me if we were to pass on the street and there is the most beautiful and sweetest little boy who you don't even know exists. And today I can't help but think how much has changed since fourteen years ago and wonder how things would be if you were here to hug on Friday.

first date

Waiting on a streetcorner in the cold for some boy you can hardly remember right and all you can think about is everything unrelated to this first date about to take place and everything related to that boy who walked you home the other night and how you still feel like bursting when beside him even though so much time has passed and how you hope this boy coming to meet you will be everything like that previous boy but a million times better.

now my heart is as cold as ice

Last winter I bundled myself in layers and hope and waited on streetcorners under night skies of so many snowflakes. I was on strike and recently heartbroken and still healing from it all and so I believed I could still be healed by a bottle of 50 and the warmth of that neighbourhood bar. Weeknight after weeknight I stumbled home and still found the energy to stumble home on the weekends. No work and no school and suddenly nobody to call at night, I found myself in limbo, in the in-between, in something that could easily feel like stasis but was actually the complete opposite, in the possibility of that moment spent waiting to meet a friend on a streetcorner at 11pm with the whole night ahead of us.

Last night I bundled myself in two sweaters and a scarf that hid half my face and I waited on that same streetcorner in a freeze that felt all too familiar. But this time there were no snowflakes and there may be no school but there is too much work in its place and there is still nobody to call at night. You may still call this the time of the in-between and reassure me that possibilities await that I have yet to imagine, and all this may be true, but last night that neighbourhood bar was warm and buzzing in a way it can only ever be in the winter but I was only cold.

Out of school (for good?), there's less movement, less anticipation, less striving towards something even if it may never be tangible. And maybe I've been looking to replace all that purpose with lost boys who won't ever be fixed. Because even though I always know this, they give me something to work towards and someone to imagine walking through the door of that neighbourhood bar to shed some warmth all over the candelight and all over me. Whatever may be the reason, it's time to give up project after project because flannel can only keep you warm for a night and they never ever call like they say they will.

And sure, I know I deserve more but that doesn't matter right now either. Right now I don't want bad or good or even the perfect in-between. Fifteen days left to the year and I will spend them hibernating with best friends and my one favourite boy who interrupts me mid-conversation only to declare "you know what, I love you."

sister winter

Alone again at the holidays feels both refreshing and sad and this year of the unexpected is almost drawing to a close and if I knew I'd be here a year ago I wouldn't have believed it one bit and that is both refreshing and sad, isn't it?