Monthly Archives: January 2014

my mouth is a field and i have taken you hostage. you are the seed in my mouth. i have bitten into your coat, but not into you. instead of spitting you out, i let you float about like a mint. you have no taste, but i learn from your texture. you have modest curves, small indents and a fragile tip that i poke with my tongue as i hold you between my teeth. i can tell which colour you are, though i cannot see you. you are diminutive, but your skin is tough, and i would never torture you. i wonder if you miss your shell, i wonder if you are cold, i wonder if i am warm enough. could you grow in the hollows of my gums? could you sprout vines on my palate? do you find comfort twirling without aim, or would you prefer the balance of the earth? i do not know how long i will keep you in my mouth; you are a guest, but also a prisoner. at some point you will have done your time, you will lose your compass, and i will bid you farewell with a spit, or a swallow.

when your mouth emits that one singular sound—continuous, smooth, infallible—and you have to steady yourself on the next available structure, or the curtain.

***

a grandmother told me that she sometimes got dizzy, so much so that she could not walk, and that it got worse when her sleep was disturbed. lately her sleep had been disturbed because the upstairs neighbour’s cat woke her up in the middle of the night during the witching hour. despite knocking on the neighbour’s ceiling with a broom, the neighbour did not seem to understand that the grandmother needed to rest, that without proper rest she would get dizzy and would not be able to walk.

the grandmother had a granddaughter, and her daughter had recently given birth to a boy—a brother to the grandmother’s granddaughter. the grandmother’s daughter breastfed the baby, and was dependent on the baby’s nursing schedule, not unlike the grandmother and the neighbour’s cat. while the grandmother did not have a child safety seat in her car, she loved to bring her granddaughter to the botanical gardens, but only when she was well-rested, which she was not much at all lately. she had decided that she was going to the régie du logement that afternoon to settle this matter once and for all. she told me that the neighbour’s cat would not get in the way of her and her granddaughter’s love of the botanical gardens.

i have ten minutes to write before i must make my way out of the door. ten minutes, or six hundred seconds. i am not running out of breath. the air still hangs around me, though the more i write, the less time there is. by the time i will be done writing this, the clock will have ticked and then stopped. by the time this letter is sealed off and buried in the back of a drawer, i will be out of the door and onto the streets of chalcedon.

“chalcedon.”

chalcedon with its 9°C weather, winds north at 11 km/h, 81% humidity.

i will walk on the quieter streets until i have no choice but to walk on the busy streets. on the busy streets i will long for the quieter ones with a nostalgia that hasn’t yet matured. i wonder if i should offer my minutes to the impending sentimentality, a gift of time to fester, a preemptive measure. by then i will be where i am supposed to be at that given moment, away from this letter, a little further apart from you. if i am not there then surely an exceptional change in direction will be to blame, though sudden gusts of wind aren’t expected in this weather.

the tramway rides down the street and our table trembles a bit. i am reminded in this vibration that this year is just a continuation of the last. i bite my nail and gently rip the polish off. my nail is still there underneath. i do not know what new years bring nor what past years leave behind. expose anything to heat and watch magic happen. my eyes are heavy and full of tricks. we’ll tell each other stories.