Sea Wall
We get off the SkyTrain as the sun is starting to set and the wind is picking up.
It’s the same train and the same wind that — some months ago — daily swept my just-washed hair.
We walk to the house I used to live in, and I swear I still live there.
I ask you — you who is here for me — if there is anything left for me here.
Blocks from the Sea Wall on the shore,
it’s settled. I belong nowhere. In this city I’m a ghost with a strange new form.
Molly and Ana are back in town for good. I’m not.
The wind is still biting as we meet them at our usual bar downtown.
My last months away dissolve with each smoke break and beer downed.
The waitress at the Cambie cuts us off in the nicest way possible.
None of us are shitfaced yet, though you do have a small frame
and now we’re back on the train.
I put my feet up on the windowsill next to Ana’s,
the reflections of our curls melt together
as Science World disappears into a blanket of black weather.
Morning is rainy still, marked by an air mattress-induced soreness.
We walk along the Sea Wall now, coins clink in a dirty cup,
birds bathe on the rocks, and I can’t shut up.
“Walking here makes me sad,” I sigh
past the parking lot for the yachts, a tangle of metal soaking in the bay.
“The ocean doesn’t make me sad” you reply but you misunderstand what I say.
