young hearts

Young love, you were so many summers ago. Tanned and fresh faced and twenty-one, I waited at streetcorners with the hope of you floating all around. Beautiful you were as you crossed the street to greet me with a kiss and beautiful I felt, too, from the way you kissed me. Young love, you were light as a feather as you shared shared shared and listened to it all. And light as a feather was I when you lifted me into the night and said you loved me and meant it in a way you only can when you're eighteen. And my eyes were only ever wide open and bright that summer and they hardly are anymore and so sometimes I close them to still see you standing there, a bouquet of sunflowers in your hand.

today

Sometimes, like today, I really think it would be possible for me to flee this city and all its people. On most days, the idea of elsewhere always seems alluring and exciting and a little bit dangerous but never real. On most days, I have no need for elsewhere because here is where I only ever want to be. But today is not most days. And today as I sat on the streetcar coming to work, all I could think about was what would happen if I didn't get off at the same stop I get off at five days a week and instead stayed seated, riding the streetcar in giant circles around the city, never having to speak to anyone once. And then I started thinking about jumping in a car, or even a plane if I could dream big enough, and going so far away everything would be new and nobody would be familiar. I didn't know where this elsewhere would be. All I knew was that it would be better than today.

when the night meets the morning sun

Rainiest of Mays and I'm walking home in the rain, again, and the wind is so strong it pushes my umbrella inside out and my bags are so heavy I have to stop four times to shift their weight and rest my hands, all the while juggling an umbrella that won't right itself, and I walked these same streets drunk and in the fog just days ago, and everything seemed different back then because right now I'm crying and I don't know why and all I want is for the sun to come back and for it to feel like real May again and all I want is to hear real words and to be hugged at the end of it all.

you still smell like last winter

It’s last winter whenever I think of you because you were only ever last winter to me, and last winter will always be the hope of it all that followed the heartbreak of what came before. You were there in the snow and the cold and the hush to walk me home and hug me goodnight, and you were there in a tie on my birthday, and you were there, but always too far away to touch and always too nervous. And now it’s next spring and here you are again, but only for a night. And you still smell like last winter, but there is no hope of it all because you were the last heartbreak there was.

after the rain

This city smells like spring these days and this city smells the most like spring in the early evenings that follow afternoon showers. Shocked but damp and clean, I watch this city shake itself awake as the yellow cuts into the grey, and I find myself trying to do the same.

wyebridge

Driving north with him, driving backwards, windows down, blue breeze blowing, pressing play on my favourite song at my favourite part of the drive (the moment we pull off the highway and I realize we are suddenly the only car following this curving road back to his once home), swallowed up in green, the familiar dotting of houses, the one with rotating stuffed animals outside, pulling into a driveway still marked by a basketball net, stepping out of the van into air that is always cleaner and cooler 1.5 hours outside of the city, stepping into the house he grew up in and into his mom’s open arms.

Almost two years since I last took this drive, I still find myself replaying it on days like today where everything feels on the brink of springsummer because this drive and that one tiny town he once called home and what it felt like to be twenty-two and in love are forever springsummer in my mind.

the past in present

The past is never the past because it's never gone. No. The past catches you off guard as you round the corner one day and bump into him and his new life hanging off his arm. And the past is there every morning and every afternoon as you ride past his house on the streetcar, sometimes daring to peer into a bedroom that still looks the way it did so long ago when you thought of it as your own, too.

But the past is more than just the physical recurrences of him stamped across this city. It's more than just the way your hands sweat at the mere sight of any and every lanky boy with brown hair dressed in a heather grey tee. It's not just because you still refuse, after all this time, to wait at the corner of College and Spadina in fear that you may round the corner and bump into him and his new life again. The past isn't even just tied to him. There are so many pasts of so many boys following you around that they all become one in the end.

And the past plagues and will never disappear because it can never actually go anywhere. At twenty-four, it's much too late. The past is the present and it becomes easiest to remember everything bad and forget all that was good. And because of those long talks that never fixed a thing and all that was wrong and whatever you felt too much or too little of, you promise yourself you'll never let the past become the future again. And all the while you're trying to figure out if this is possible or not, you sit with walls up and everything securely tucked away.