A Day of Curious Interaction

8:30 am: 30-something Taxi-Driver

The discomfort of his own silence, leads him to hum at a consistent and barely audible volume. He makes soft snapping sounds with his tongue, to replace the words he can't be bothered to say. I catch his nervous gaze as he checks his blind spot, and look away, to avoid the accidental intimacy of eye contact.

9am-noon: Pam, the Athletic Girl's Grandma

Her laughter reminds me of someone I once loved, so I keep talking, just to hear it more. She asks questions, I answer, Jasmine Tea in hand, wondering if her granddaughter, the Athlete, knows how lucky she is. We share stories, as I watch the world breeze by through her train window. I tell her it was a pleasure, and I mean it. She says, "it was lovely to meet you", and I feel it.

12:15pm: Norman the Grey-Haired Go-Bus Driver
He likes my suitcase and asks if it's a vintage collectors. I giggle with flattery and tell him I just like ugly things from Value Village. He says, that's fair. I push my luggage into the lower compartment with my foot, trying to avoid my dress from flying up in the wind. He waits, and I hope he doesn't see my underwear. I hand him my ticket, and he nods me in. Goodbye Norman.

12:16- 2pm: Dress-Pant Man with No Beard

He offers to hold my carrot-sprout juice from the Union Station, as I cram my over sized purple carry-on into the tiny compartment above us. He smiles, and I secretly wince. Happy with his kind gesture of juice-holding, I sit beside, rather than behind him. but weary of his naked beardless face and stagnate coffee breath, I keep my left leg closer to the aisle, than to him. We quietly exchange polite, yet awkward smiles, and I pretend to sleep for 20 minutes, trying to avoid the smell of his words. He tells me the weather is looking up, and I agree. He tells me he caught the 6:30 train to Aurora, and I sympathize with his exhaustion, plucking sneakily with my fingers at my roasted red peppers. He looks out his window, though I swear he's watching me through it's reflection in the corner of his eye....so i continue to eat my lunch with extra swift and stealth. He shakes my hand before his stop, and leaves. Dress pants and bad cologne.

2:20-4pm: Gabriel, the Nigerian Pharmacist from Newfoundland

Giggling, he enters the Go-bus, relieved by the fluke of having caught it, despite his watch being 1 hour behind. He shows me his wrist when he sits next to me. Our legs sort of touch, but I don't mind. After exchanging pleasantries, he gives me 2 and a half hours of career advice, as I nod and smile when appropriate. His accent is endearing, so I don't bother interrupting him, to explain why I don't want to work for the government or join the Navy. I like the mystery of my own silence. He tells me he met his wife on a bus, when he was in college. I notice his stubby fingers remind me of my eight grade math teacher's. I tell him I'm married too, mostly for the secret delight I get from referring to Andrew as "my husband", when speaking to strangers. He waves at me from outside, after we drop him off. I can tell he's giggling again, even as we pull away. Gabriel, the pharmacist who wishes he still lived in BC, will now visit his cousins for the weekend. In Barrie.

I cry everytime she calls me "Baby Girl", because I'm terrified it will be the last...

coffee

I use to keep my Barbie clothes in my Dad's old Folgers can. Whenever I breathe in the smell of coffee, I still envision miniature plastic pink high-heels, matching floral print dresses and teeny-tiny little fluorescent coloured bathing suits.

Millie, my elderly next door neighbour, once had a tiny yellow porcelain toilette figurine resting on the back of her own human sized toilette.

When I was 5, I fell in love with this mini toilette and for months after would visit just to sit in her bathroom and admire it.

Sometimes I'd bring my Barbies over, just so they could pee too.

Millie took pity and sympathy on my Barbie's poor bladders-- as they'd sometimes have to hold their pee in for days at a time- between our visits. Deep down, she didn't want my Barbie house to be filled with the daunting stench of Barbie and Ken urine, so she graciously awarded me her miniature yellow porcelain toilette, for being her favorite neighbour.

I was so thrilled that sometimes most of my play time consisted of Barbies taking turns going poop.

And that's what the smell of Coffee reminds me off...

Barbie turds.

pr i de

pieces

When she fell for the first time,

Gravel mixed with blood.

With tweezers,

your hands, were the only

patient and gentle enough to pluck every pebble

from torn flesh.

She healed, for the first time

because of you.

But she falls. Again. And again. because of you.

and each time body hits earth,

skin opens, to reveal.

Her falls, turn flesh

into ground, to stumble.

and you become,

the gravel, wedged deep beneath

broken skin.

Tiny flecks of grey,

enter through crimson,

and hide below the layers of translucent white.

Sometimes she swears she can see you,

long after wounds have grown over,

she still feels you, she still knows

you are there.

Foreign material, in the pores of a beating, hurting soul.

Gravel in elbow. in knee cap. in chin. in heart.

Gravel too tiny, too numerous, too hidden

for any human hand to remove.

P i e c e s of you, crawl through her.

they creep into the sacred parts,

into the painful spaces,

no band-aid can guard.

Pieces of gravel,

find one another, deep, deep, deep, in

and claw at her aching chest, to get out.

But it is her skin, that has grown over you,

enfolded you, imprisoned you.

Yet she is the one,

who feels trapped,

by the healing

of her secret hurts.

And every night she wonders,

how much longer you'll live,

wedged under the skin

you once tried to mend.

.breznichar of bohemia.

"I feel her in unexpected moments, her Assumption into heaven happening in places inside me. She will suddenly rise, and when she does, she does not go up, up into the sky, but further and further inside me. August says she goes into the holes life has gouged out of us"

- Sue-Monk-Kidd

without and before him

She tells her story, and he listens

though he's heard it a million times over,

his eyes & his smile tells you it's his first.

She tells her story, the one of the life she had before him,

yet he becomes her memories,

her memories become his.

There is no story, without or before him.

Sixty-five years later, they sit

tea cup in hand, talking about their lives

in first-person narrative

and in these quiet moments,

during an after-dinner tea,

I watch them,

the love thick in the space,

they share as their own,

I hear them,

the words one feels,

and the other speaks...

and I realize that this, this

is what marriage is-

A shared story; two narratives folded into one

so intimately bound,

it is impossible for even the authors to determine where one ends

and the other begins

And I lay here, now in the crest of night,

your arms fold around me, your hand tucked in mine

and the rise and fall of my own thoughts,

begin to match the rhythms of your sleeping breath

In this silence I listen to our own story,

Six, not Sixty years long,

but already it tells of the messiness of heart-break and tragedy,

the strange beauties of redemption and struggle,

the grief and celebration of a love, not always whole,

but always beating towards life.

And in this silence, in our short story

I understand for the first time, the overwhelming beauty and awe of

forever.

And this hand, this sleeping hand in mine,

is no longer just my best friend's,

but my husband's.

And I realize, at this moment, more strongly than ever before,

that I will hold this hand, until it is old, until it is wrinkly

until it too, someday holds a cup of tea,

in a warm soft room, after dinner

and tells our story to those who came after.

You'll tell this story,

and I will listen, though I've heard it a million times before,

my smile and my eyes, will tell you it's my first.

.......

..... I look forward to the day,

that you become my memories,

and I become yours.