Memory

The pianist died on November 12, 1999. That night brought the first snowfall in Montreal. I know, because I looked it up two decades later, checking if it snowed on the night the lawyer came to tell me the news. Details slip with time, and I no longer know fact from fiction. Two decades into the new millenium, I begin the process of document the truth. Not the truth according to something outside of me, but as a reflection of who it is that tells this story.

I stormed out of the café where I once worked, and took a walk with a former coworker. We sat on a bench at the Old Port and I spoke of the love of my dreams, the one no one else remembered. The blond boy looked me in the eye, examining me, then lamented how it was to be a runaway.

On my way home, I felt that someone was following me. Not wanting to alert them, I kept my pace til the end of the block, then turned the corner and ran past a stranger. A few beats later, I heard a yelp, a familiar sound. I turned, and saw in the dim streetlights that a woman bumped into the same person I passed.