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."