Living here, it doesn’t come easy, but I suppose it’s what I have to do until I find the funds to permanently leave.
Time slowed in the dark bus to the dark trickle of molasses. Travel encased in warmth and looking out at cold, the perfect orange of sodium lights, dirty highway, I felt my chest packed with string. It unraveled as we drove, sliding roughly out of a tiny hole in the center of my back, as if one end was tied to a rib and the other end behind me in the city. Oh the snow, the light crystals of shine that I would gather in handfuls and toss in the air.
I wanted to run.
Last night, for the second time in a week, I was to be found spending the night up in a home that was built from the bricks of a tax bracket that lives indifferent to my existence. But unlike the bed in Outremont that felt comfortable, redolant of music and welcome teeth, the bed here smelled like a museum exhibit, like I had crept into it past glass or a red velvet rope, all untouched history and neglect.
I fell asleep as the sun came up like a stone, trying to remember Sylvia Plath:
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Soon I’ll have to explain about Outremont, the people who saved my trip and forced me native overnight, breaking my heart and the language barrier with letting me drive, a grand piano, tango lessons, and singing.
I’m still irritated that I didn’t bring anything back with me.