quiet in the city

dear,

this morning i made potatoes that remind me of vancouver. cilantro and red onion, soy sauce. green onion was an after-thought. reminding me of mornings off hastings sitting in my landlady’s small back-yard, eating potatoes and tasting the early morning like something you would sip gently not because it is delicate but because it will not last. i miss the west more and more, think of vancouver, that strange squatter whose love i want and reject simultaneously. and often, thinking of vancouver while in montreal makes me feel like i am missing one lover while still learning how to love another i desire just as much, and sometimes more.

i’m still trying to push together the pieces of june because toronto hurt more than i’ve told anyone in actual words, though the thick sobs i couldn’t keep in at pride after seeing that street art performance were some of the hardest to cry, even in front of my friends. i’m never sure why i feel so raw still, if maybe it is some flaw in my genetic makeup that makes me re-visit trauma like hitting myself in the face over and over, convinced that eventually it won’t bruise. often people make up for it, and i will keenly remember ___ holding my hand to ease my intense fear at that rally (even if we are no longer friends) as strongly as i will remember another friend covering my body with her own like she was protecting me from bullets as i gasped every bad feeling i could into the grass at lionel-groulx. both made summer warm for a few moments, even in my cold chest.

i’m going to go finish my cold coffee now,

v.

p.s. lately i am so prolific when writing that i have to cull several paragraphs if i decide to share. i feel like it is probably part of healing and am letting it happen publicly, here, when i would normally censor myself completely. consider this my alternative to screaming on a streetcorner, then, because i am a quiet person with a tremendous need to be heard but a sound sense of keeping it contained to a place where people can choose to see it.

dear,

the coffee is hot and strong, thick in my throat and i’m sitting in my bedroom on cazelais feeling french and english heavy on my tongue like i’m balancing weights there, in the small middle-groove i can dip into a bowl to hold liquid. i take “oui” out flick it back and forth through my mouth like i’m shaking a dusty sheet over the balcony out back. oui. oui. everyone knows that oui means yes. when practising, start small, start with oui. practice saying yes when speaking french. i’ve said oui jokingly into the mouth of a lover, biting my smile into sections we can share. and i’ve said oui, seriously, to someone in a shop “oui, c’est ca. merci.” often, i feel an obligation to say yes.

i m trying to halve my possessions, trying to get rid of my things in this bedroom where i live on leased time anyway. i’m figuratively homeless as of the 1st, couch surfing and sleeping in a closet with my cat and my boxes. i haven’t been here before. maybe this sad, but never sad and without a space to entrench myself and heal.

they are doing repairs on the turcot, pieces of cement fall from its legs day and night; we go to sleep with it and wake up with it. at  times it pulls me out of a dream and in my sleep i wonder if the world is ending, buildings caving of their own accord around the neighbourhood.

i don’t even know how to leave this city on foot or by bike. i’ve done exit-ramps on buses, but thinking about it i realize i really couldn’t walk out of montreal on a whim. imagine highway stretching grey and thick for miles and miles, neutral territory without buildings where cars mimicking wild animals cross the open space that is not naturally tree-less. i want to leave the city. iwanttoleavethecity.

as for the rest of the week, if you want you can picture me in the social assistance office, sitting like a doughy easy-bake treat under hard neon lights. if i were i ship i’d be the titanic, i’m that sunk. my mum would diagnose post-traumatic stress, maybe, the way she was worried i’d start having nightmares after what happened to me in toronto. but mostly the dreams are just jarring and cold: i’m sleeping between my mattress and the wall, in the small gap  with the box-spring below me, comfortingly unyielding. my body ends up there every night like a planet attracted by gravitational force, sleeping and unable to resist its pull.

but there is always a sick beauty to feeling this fucked up, a sort of openness of possibilities because there are so few options left you just have to make some up. and i have never been the kind of person who forgets to love fall and its crisp, cold air with a magnetic undercurrent of dead leaves. and i am building a new piece of me inside every secret chamber of my body; i feel like soon this sadness will roll over in submission to the person who isn’t ready to be breathe quite yet.

no poetry today,

v

dear,

cafe mariani seemed sort oover-ritzy when i first saw it, but since our internet got cut i’ve come to (if not like) at least appreciate it. most of the time i sit at the window, crossing my legs tightly at the ankle so no one can see up my skirt. across the street in my direct line of vision is a parking lot flanked by a funeral home and a large, white bank. i’ve noticed a group of men congregate in that parking lot almost every day with their matching blue-and-white coolers to sit and talk, sometimes for as long as i sit i the cafe, quietly envious. sometimes they return to their cars and drive off before i leave. other times they are still there when i get up to go, shouldering my grey backpack and trying to walk like i have a purpose- which i don’t, these days. i barely have a place to live, if i’m being honest. but these two factors only really pull me in a bad direction if i sit still for too long with nothing else to occupy me.

these days, all i want are new words, as though that would do me any good. look, it’s storming outside and they keep the airconditioner on too high in here so i’m sort of shivering in my layers. but i’ve been hoping for this rain. the man sitting at the end of the row of four seats keeps looking at me like his mouth can’t help the words he wants to pass over his red-covered book, but i am studiously ignoring him. old men always want to talk to me but i rarely want to hear what they have to say, maybe that i’ve got sweet blue eyes and flushed cheeks or my body curves invitingly, unthreatening as a plump river that would never exceed its banks, so placid and shallow a cursory glance reveals all its depths.

i love fall, but lately all i can think about is rain and yelling at time for leaving me so fast and far behind.

Perhaps there is someone in this world

To whom I could send all these lines. Well then!

Let the lips smile bitterly

And a tremor touch the heart again,*

v

*that’s anna akhmatova, in case you were wondering.