it started slowly, like most good things.
paul and i drifted through vieux-montréal, not in a hurry, not quite anchored.
work came in waves—open tabs, notes half written, a reply sent too late but still meaningful.
the afternoon stretched without agenda.
there’s a softness in being accompanied without being watched.
the streets felt unfamiliar in a familiar way.
like they’d been repainted since last week but forgot to dry.
a man singing to himself passed us near saint-paul.
no one looked twice.
by the time we reached frontenac, the air had changed.
just enough rain to make you notice.
just enough light to feel like something was ending.
we said goodbye without ceremony.
no need for it.
i kept walking east, alone.
the drizzle softened the sounds of the city.
my breath felt louder than usual.
there’s something about walking in the rain that makes your thoughts feel more like weather than noise.
the lights on sherbrooke flickered early.
someone had chalked a heart onto the sidewalk that was already dissolving.
i didn’t take a photo.
it didn’t need to last.
i just kept moving.
not away, not toward.
just through.
maybe this is what pause looks like.
sun on porcelain. bridge in the distance. book barely opened.
the city behind the cup isn’t waiting. it just moves.
but for a moment, i don’t.
they still whisper her name like it’s dangerous.
but this isn’t a whisper.
it’s a scream, wheatpasted to brick.
marie-josèphe angélique—enslaved, accused, executed.
not for a crime,
but for refusing to live quietly in a world built to crush her.
je me souviens, they say.
but they don’t mean her.
they mean the colony.
they mean the order she tried to set fire to.
this paper will peel, fade, dissolve into dust.
but she was never paper.
she was kindling.
and we’re still burning.
this was a die-in.
healthcare workers, gathered in the middle of the city, bodies on the ground for gaza.
we were there not just as clinicians, not just as queers, not just as people trained to care—
but as witnesses to a system that pretends to be neutral while choosing a side.
we already knew that silence wasn’t an accident.
we’ve seen it before—in the wards, in the media, in the funding reports.
but still, there’s something about laying your body down on cold ground
that makes the grief feel sharper.
and makes the refusal feel real.
my keffiyeh wasn’t a symbol.
it was a practice.
a reminder.
a commitment to name genocide where others equivocate.
to be present when presence costs something.
the pink triangle on my chest traced a line back to act up,
to queer resistance in the face of state abandonment.
but this wasn’t about metaphor.
this was about gaza.
about children buried under rubble.
about medics killed in white coats.
about naming what we know,
and what our institutions refuse to say.
i didn’t speak.
i didn’t need to.
sometimes protest is not what you say
but what you don’t move to stop.
