Off the subway and onto another, they sit next to each other, polite giggles, how wide her smile. Eyes narrowing as she flicks her head away, and back again. Strays of ink hair fell onto his shoulder and her freckles shimmered as she nods, "that's exactly so."
He didn't understand, he sometimes did, but this time he didn't. He puzzled at her slim eyes and quick nods. What was she confirming, what had she said? He remembers only her smell; steamed rice and shampoo. After a few stops, they noticed a shambling man, gazing from across the train. With a fog in his eyes, the man looked at them shamelessly, longingly.
Just before the final station, the man rose and shifted towards them, until he stood firmly before the train door. He mumbled a murmur and looked down at their feet. The two teenagers looked at each other. He saw her dark olive eyes, light and playful, and they laughed at their own silent hesitation. As they walked past the shambling man, he could hear a faint, coarse whisper. And he paused a moment, and tried to listen. He thought he had heard something familiar, and immediately was pulled away by her arms determined.
The seasons melt into snow and it's winter now. They somehow found each other again, in his car and headed towards a restaurant. He followed her directions and parked near Palmerston Avenue. They then sat from across each other, and with earnest searching, they scaled the history of each other's walls. He had left the city, while she remained. "I love Palmerston." She had once said when they were younger. At the restaurant, she ticked off the past in an increasingly complex manner. Stories of marriage swirled into recollections of affairs. The names were foreign to him, like the dish he ordered and barely ate. He looked only at her lips as she confidently drank red wine. Deep rouge waves cascaded within a thin frail glass.
In the car, she had asked, "Now that she is around that age, would you care who she brings home?" He stopped at the mute red light and said that he'd be fine with it, that he trusts her to make her own decisions. "People make mistakes, it's inevitable isn't it? You learn and you move on, it's okay." The snow fell softly onto the wind shield-- landing and melting in rhythmic symmetry. She was looking at him, at his mouth in the shadows as he spoke, and turned away towards the window when he finished. The car accelerated onwards and the lonely glow of street lights blurred across her eyes. She had always resented his careless ambivalence, and her silence told him he was wrong.
They undress each other in a hotel room.
Slowly.
He doesn't understand why she had searched so desperately for a view of the lake.
At this time of year, there are ice floes on Lake Ontario like gently bobbing islands, suspended in the slow process of melting and freezing again.
The hours until her flight dissolves coldly into the corners of the hotel room.
As he kisses her neck in the pale morning light, he feels a tear roll down her cheek.
"I don't know what I'm doing."
He stops and looks into the quivering pools forming over her eyes.
"I don't love him, you know."
He lifts himself off her and off the bed, as she continues to look at the ceiling.
"He doesn't hurt me like you do."
A suffocating silence.
He leans aside the window and sees a strong wind pass over the ice floes.
The wind lifts a thin layer of snow into a shimmering, empty rotation.
He parts his lips and they are dry.
His voice is coarse and distant.
She closes her eyes, tears escaping and she nods,
"that's exactly so."
- December 2013