today

Today, this city, my city, did not look or feel in the height of winter. No! There was nothing cold or grey or lonely about the way the sun bounced off my streetcar window and back onto the bluest sky January has ever seen. I hopped and beamed down the street and not because of any boy for once. There is no boy worth writing about that is not long past-tense, and I realized, today, in the midst of the most beautiful day, that for the first time in a very long time, I don't need a boy to lighten my step. My city and a tiny hint of spring were hope enough.

silver soul

It's been so long that I can pass his house or that corner where he once said he first fell in love with me and feel as close to nothing as possible. And it's been so long that I forget what it ever was like to be one half of a whole or what it felt like to even want to be that half. And it's been so long that I don't even know what movies he'd want to see in the theatres or how to be the half of any whole for that matter. And it's been so long that I'll go places I shouldn't, only to be held in the quickest of moments because even though I may not be anyone's half, it's sometimes still nice to pretend for the night. And it's been so long that I can listen to this song and wonder how something so beautiful exists. But it hasn't been so long that I can listen to this song and sing "gather medicine for heartache so we can act a fool" and forget the truth and stories in those words and know that it'll be almostforever before I'll be anything but a jumble of quarters and thirds and nothing resembling a half, or whole.

looking for nancy

What I was trying to say before and failed to is everything Mr. Nowlan manages to sum up so beautifully and so true in a mere seventeen lines.

Looking for Nancy,
everywhere, I've stopped
girls in trenchcoats
and blue dresses,
said
Nancy, I've looked
all over
hell for you,
Nancy, I've been afraid
that I'd die
before I found you.

But there's always
been some mistake:

a broken streetlight,
too much rum or merely
my wanting too much
for it to be her. (97)

you. always.

I still walk these streets, my streets, and think about you. Always? No. But still too much. "Love you all the time, even though you're no't mine." Sometimes I think I see your face but then it's just a stranger's and so my heart stops pounding and I keep on going. Even after all this, I still look for you everytime. What would I say? What would you say? Love? Never. Like? Too much. "You couldn't lose me if you tried." I'll probably regret this in the morning.

other words

Confession: I have not picked up one book since I finished my M.A. in September. I guess when school turns a love into work, it becomes sometimes too daunting to return to that lost love and try to remember what you once loved about it. But although the magic left books for awhile, I feel that love returning, albeit slowly, this year. I hope.

In the meantime, last year, before September, I still read, and sometimes for pleasure, and these are some of the favourite lines I came across:

"Goddamn," John said to me when he closed the book. "Don't ever tell me again you can't write. That's my birthday present to you."
I remember tears coming to my eyes.
I feel them now.
In retrospect, this had been my omen, my message, the early snowfall, the birthday present no one else could give me.
He had twenty-five nights left to live.

I know it's early, but I keep thinking he's still here. Well, not here, I know he's not here, but on his way here. On his way back from somewhere coming here.
Of course, I don't think it's my old dad in his old body coming here. It's my old dad, in a new form.
Thinking your dad might be coming in a new form is not so bad. It's like you're always excited, and getting ready, and listening for the door.

Or when your heart crashed so young at 54 as you fell from mom's arms t the dance floor did you see islands?

I don't like to think of myself as an insincere person but if I say I love you and I don't mean it then what else am I? Will I cherish you, adore you, make way or you, make myself better for you, look at you and always see you, tell you the truth? And if love is not those things then what things?

new years backwards

We counted backwards from ten to one and hugged and popped corks and I danced and I sang so hard I lost my voice and I wore a jumpsuit because I can wear a dress any other day and I counted backwards and closed my eyes tight and wished even harder.

by the way, you know you've always been the one

I like to think that as the clock struck midnight and Thursday became Friday and 2009 turned into 2010 and the aughts became the past, the sky opened up and covered the entire city in fluffy white flakes. Can you imagine a more beautiful greeting to all this change I'm still not ready to embrace? I may have already been three beers and two glasses of champagne in, but I remember all that actually met me outside was grey slush and everything ugly and nothing pretty.

Yet hours and drinks later, my memory is less true and more wishful and so I can tell myself that flakes really were falling as I jumped into a cab and headed somewhere I probably shouldn't have. But although I knew this, at that moment, it was the only place I would've been, and my head was spinning and my heart was thumping and I was fidgeting in expectation as I blurted his address aloud. The parties had ended and the streets were dark and still and quiet and because of all the racing going on inside of me, I like to believe it was snowing as he greeted me on his doorstep.

I snuck out in the morning and waited in a bus shelter and wondered why I had just done what I did. But then it started snowing. Big and fluffy and white and for real this time. In that instant, the city was suddenly mine again and new and clean and beautiful. A little late, but it returned nonetheless. And at that moment, I knew why I'd done what I did. Sometimes all one needs is to be held on the city's most magical night when she feels no sparkle inside herself. And then my sparkle returned. Not in the form of a boy, but in the way everything outside the bus window became unknown but also all sorts of familiar underneath those flakes.

So Toronto, I may have been hiding away, but you've always been the one. Not some boy and especially not that one. No. Never. Just you.